Thursday, April 11, 2013

Fail Forward but Look Backward


No one wants to fail. I grew up hearing, "Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan". I don't know anyone who wants to be an orphan, so we do anything within our power not to taste failure even if that means living a mediocre life. Growing up, I have learned that failure is an orphan only when you stop learning. A Nigerian proverb says, "When a young man falls, he looks forward, but when an old man falls, he looks backward". The old man looks backward to find out what caused him to fall and prevents that from happening again. The young person just gets up  and walks away, and you can imagine what would happen. Your plans may have failed, but you have gained a lesson that only those experiences could have taught you. Thomas Edison said "He discovered 9,999 ways in which a light bulb did not work". Everyone one of us will miss the mark at some point in our lives, but the important thing is the direction our experiences take us? Do you join a pity party and make excuses or do you ask yourself "what can i learn from these".

Many people forget that Coke was discovered by serendipity by an Atlanta Pharmacist, John Pemberton, who was trying to make a cure for headaches. Penicillin was discovered by a scientist, Alexander Fleming, who forgot to clean his culture plates before he went on vacation. Failing does not make you a failure, all great men have failed in their life times and  used those experiences as turning points in their lives. It doesn't matter how many times you fall down, but how many times you get up and learned from each fall. Michael Jordan, a basket legend of our time says it best, " I have failed over and over in my life and that's why I succeed. You have lived in regret for too long, its time to close that chapter and move on. Your best days are ahead of you; just believe!!!

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