There is no failure in god scripture

There is No Failure 

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is a delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” - Denis Waitley

 If there is one certain truth concerning the possibility of failure, it is that you cannot fail if you never attempt anything. None of us like to fail and perhaps, more than anything else, it is the fear of failing that holds many people back from defining their dream and going for it. Let’s face it, it is a lot easier to just go with the flow, turn up, get paid, and settle for living a quiet, untroubled existence.

At some time, you might come to think that you will never be able to reach your most ambitious goals, and that perhaps you were silly to even think it might be a possibility in the first place. That sentiment is essentially self-doubt, and if you experience it, it is really a healthy indicator that you are thinking in the right way. If you are dreaming big dreams, you are certain to have doubts about your own ability to succeed. All successful people have experienced self-doubt at some time in their journey to success.

Filled with self-doubt, many people are prepared to give up. They justify their decision by reasoning that there is nothing wrong with living a quiet life. The sad thing is that, in making that decision, they also are sacrificing their one opportunity to make a real difference in this world. But, at least, they don’t have to worry about the effort of trying and therefore, never have to face the prospect of failure. As the saying goes, ‘show me a person who has never failed and I will show you someone who has never tried!’

So what happens if you try and then, you fail? It is a very good question and one that is worth thinking about before you commence your journey. It is often also said that you cannot fail if you never give up. This is the essence of persistence, of course, but as we discussed earlier, you need to develop the wisdom to ensure you don’t get into a situation where you are so invested in some approach that you won’t let it go, even when everything is telling you it is not working.

Always remember that staying flexible means being prepared to change your approach to produce the result you are after. In changing your route, you are not changing the goal. Failure can be an excellent teacher in this respect, provided you are prepared to learn the lessons and ensure you don’t repeat the same mistakes. As the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) principle puts it, ‘there is no failure, only feedback.’

 If you always view failure as the empirical evidence that some particular idea, method or way is not right, then you will be able to continually make adjustments to your approach, until you find what does work. This is the mentality of really successful people and it is the right way to deal with failure. If you fail, always try to learn from the experience.

 When you are heavily invested in the success of a particular project, perhaps having even staked everything you have on its success, and it turns sour, then you are into the kind of territory that very few people have ever trodden. That’s the kind of experience that shaped some of the greatest successes in history. It is by learning from the experience that so few people can ever gain, that loftier goals and better plans can be forged. Yes, you will have to get up off the floor and try again. You will lick your wounds, think deeply about the experience and regroup.

Here are some questions to ponder when you find yourself in that place:

• What have I learned through this experience? 
• What is the root cause of this failure? 
• How could this have been prevented? 
• What did I overlook? 
• What contingency might have saved the situation? 
• Where is the silver lining? 
• What am I taking away from this situation that will be invaluable in the future? 

When you fail, as difficult as it may be, you should really welcome it. Of course, that’s not an easy thing to do, but that attitude does separate the winners from the losers. Failure shapes us in a way that no other experience really can. You only have to study the lives of the people you admire the most to discover how they often failed their way to success. 

We all know that ‘a winner never quits and a quitter never wins’ – that, I believe was something that Napoleon Hill once said. But there is a lot more to it than that. This is about learning the lessons that only those people who have ever stood where you are, right at that very moment, will ever have the opportunity to learn. 

You can really only ever appreciate the vital importance of some of your failures after you have finally succeeded. Looking back, you will be able to see that you would never have been able to overcome some situation had you not previously experienced failure. Remember that success will be all the sweeter when it comes. Stay committed, but also make sure you learn from every failure. 

There is one particular learning experience that I will always remember. It took place when I was about eleven years old and it lasted a couple of weeks. It was a very painful experience too. It was learning how to ride my bike. 

The bicycle had been a Christmas present from my Grandmother. We didn't have a car in those days and we went to see my grandparents that year during the holidays. They lived in Scunthorpe (UK) and we got there using a mixture of taxis and the train. You can imagine what it was like bringing the bike back with us using the same services. I can remember other people telling my Dad that 'they' might not allow the bike on the train and that he would not be able to fit it into a taxi. But he never allowed minor detail like that to get in the way. 

Of course, the bike had to go away until Christmas day, but then, as soon as I could get my hands on it, I and my Mum were out front, ready to give riding it a shot. She had a simple plan: I was to sit on the bike whilst she held onto the back of the saddle. She was going to hold on to keep me steady while I pedaled. What she didn't tell me was that she was going to let go when we were up to a little speed. In her mind, I would not know the difference; I would be happily pedaling away and riding the bicycle and she would have successfully passed on this important skill. 

So, it was probably about three or four seconds later that I crashed into the neighbor's fence, falling from my bike and badly grazing my knee. Ouch! I can still feel that fall now. "Right," she announced, completely unperturbed by the circumstances, "get back on." Well, I thought she had to be joking, but she wasn't. I think it took a bit of encouragement before I was prepared to give it another go, but I can remember her telling me that everyone falls off the first time and now it was going to be all okay.

 It wasn't! I still have the school photograph, taken a couple of days later showing me with the two black eyes. It was one of the most painful moments of my young life. I remember that the neighbor came out and picked me up. He carried me back home and my Mum cleaned me up. There was this stuff they used to put on cuts back in those days - iodine - ouch, again! And I can still feel the sting of that stuff too. 

Back then, when you bought something for a child, especially clothing as I recall, you always bought the item that was a few sizes too big, and then the child wore the garment until it was a few sizes too small. Children grow so quickly and that was the way you could ensure you got your money's worth. My Gran naturally bought into this philosophy, so the bike was too big for me. My Dad put blocks on the pedals so that I could reach them, but as I recall, I could just about get my tiptoes on the ground if I got off the saddle and straddled the crossbar. That meant that there really was no reliable way I could stop. 

It was a couple of weeks later that my Mum thought I was ready for lesson number two. This time, she briefed me about what to do. She explained how to stay on and, as a result, I felt a lot more confident. But it was all to no avail as time and again, I fell off the thing. But I remember the turning point. It was when I decided to practice using her bike. It was much bigger than mine, of course, but because it was a ladies' bicycle, it had no crossbar and that meant that I could get my feet on the floor quickly, when I needed to. That made all the difference. Soon I was able to ride her bike without falling off and, once my brain had made the right connections, I was able to get back on my own bike and ride it, despite the aforementioned difficulties. 

Sometimes life is just like that. We want to learn something, but we just have to, metaphorically, fall off. We get hurt, we doubt ourselves and our courage takes a knock. When we are ready, we get back into the hot seat ready to give it another go and we fall again. We begin to wonder just how many times we will have to pick ourselves up and try again before we start to get things right. 

As I remember the late, great Jim Rohn saying on one occasion, succeeding is the same process that a baby goes through when they are learning to walk. They don't try a few times and then give up, they try and try and try (and try) until they can walk. In fact, anyone who has ever watched a baby learning this skill will know that they too, first learn how to fall (fail) safely ... and then they try and try until they succeed. What is going on inside their brain, with each apparent failure, is called plasticity – their infant's brain is shaped and molded through the experience. Subtle adjustments are being made with each apparent failure and that is how the necessary learning takes place. 

The same applied when I learned to ride my bike. Using my Mom's bike meant that I could effectively fall (fail) without getting too badly hurt. So think about this, in relation to whatever you are trying to achieve because, when we fail, we naturally don't feel too good about ourselves; failure is often painful and we can easily get discouraged. But perhaps, before you can master that difficult task or skill, failure might not only be inevitable, it might actually be necessary.

 Perhaps the best example of the use of failure as a feedback mechanism can be found in the story of Thomas Edison who, as you know, invented the first practical electric lamp. The principle of generating light using electricity had been demonstrated by the Englishman, Sir Humphry Davy, in 1860. After that, the idea of producing a commercially practical electric light was worked on by the Englishman, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, and Americans, Charles Francis Brush and Lewis H. Latimer. However, it was Thomas Edison, in 1879, who eventually managed to produce the first commercially viable electric lamp. 

But, in the process, the amount of apparent failure that Edison had to endure before he finally found success was absolutely astonishing. He conducted thousands of unsuccessful experiments at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey before he found exactly the right filament.

"After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn't be done that way and that we would have to try some other way."

 Interview with Thomas Edison, published in the January 1921 issue of American Magazine.

 It is understandable and quite natural to become downhearted, discouraged, and even, as Edison’s associate had been, disgusted, following failure. On occasions, you might even feel like giving up. But you have to accept that your journey to success is inevitably going to pass through this territory at some stage and it is what you do, when you are in that place, that determines whether or not you will finally succeed.


Read More:   Follow Your Passion And Success Of Your Life.