A Fortunate Failure

Many times we have tried and failed at projects. Some people view those failures as the end, but the majority of failures are actually blessings in disguise.

Webster's Dictionary defines Failure as an "omission of occurrence or performance; specifically: a failing to perform a duty or expected action." A second definition for Failure is "lack of success".

There have been many times in my lifetime that I have failed at something I hoped to do. Each time after the failure, when looking back at the entire specific situation, it was determined that the failure was actually a blessing in disguise. Failures are really just temporary. Depending on how you view "failures" each failure can be a blessing.

If you talk to a door-to-door salesman, every time someone says "No" to them, that can be construed as a failure, but the successful salesman looks at that 'failure' as a blessing, because now he can move onto the next person who will listen and possibly accept his offer. If you don't fail at something, then how are you going to learn to do it better in the future. We all didn't start walking the minute we put our minds to it. We all failed in our first attempts at walking. The blessing is that as we try and fail at something, we have learned not to do that particular thing again because it doesn't work...

So much for generalities, let's get specific. A very recent event for me was interviewing for a particular project. I did not get the project, so you could say that I failed at the interview. The failure was a major blessing for me though. What has come to light is that the project I would have been involved in would have only worked for a month or two at most before it imploded. If I had quit my current direction, I would have worked at another task, and essentially wasted a lot of my time working at something that was ultimately doomed to fail. The blessing is that I did not uproot and did not change what I was doing for this new project. If I had not failed at first, I would have lost momentum in my current set of projects and may not have been able to get back on track with everything else that I have been working on.

After watching others suffer in the project that I didn't get, I am very pleased that I failed to land the project in the first place. It was a major blessing to have failed at that.

Even business failures are usually blessings in disguise. I have met many business owners who attempted new product lines that ultimately failed. In the long run, these same business owners looked back over their failures and successes and actually believe that it was the failures they made that ultimately caused them to become the successful business people they are now. Even Thomas Alva refined the prior failures of the incandescent light to create the early commercial version of the light bulb. Those early failures became blessings for us.

In a nutshell, even if you fail at something you are currently working on, do not take that failure as the virtual 'end of the world'. It is my belief that the majority of the failures (both in business and in our personal life) we encounter turn out to be blessings in disguise. Each failure is one more step closer toward that success you continue to drive for.

Until tomorrow...