Failure Works!

So many times we look at failure to accomplish a goal, activity or achievement as something bad. Failure is made out as something to be avoided.

Nothing illustrates this so strongly as our school system. We act as if the grade point average dictates one’s ability to achieve or be happy. It can actually hinder learning by placing a higher value on being perfect.

As with all things that are tied to expectations and achievements there is an emotional charge that is positive if the achievement is made and a negative one if failure is involved. The negative emotion is so strong that it will impact the response of those you thought you knew very well.

Let me give you an example that occurs in the workplace. When a layoff is announced word gets around that you have been laid off. It seems that those you were laughing with, eating lunch with, and exchanging news of family activities all of sudden do not seem to even acknowledge you. They may actually avoid eye contact. It is bad enough that somehow you can’t shake the feeling you must have done something wrong or not done something right. Now you have to deal with others treating you as if you are at your own funeral.

These same things play out in different ways. A child that did not make the football team, a couple who lost their home or the person who contracts a highly visible sickness; they are all examples of some unspoken feeling of failure.

I like how my sister-in-law put it,” I gave at my church to the sick and shut-in committee. Only to find out when I became the sick and shut-in not much was actually getting done”.

In other words we find ways to actually avoid dealing with someone when they are down.

After saying all of this I am not trying to make anyone feel guilty if you have been the person observing another one that seems to be in the midst of a failure. This message is to the person who is looking at their failure as something bad, wrong, or a final statement of who they are.

Please listen to me. Failure is not the same as giving up. In all actuality failure is the search for getting something accomplished. We so often seek the “oh so satisfying feeling” of being accepted, recognized, and praised that we treat the acknowledgement as if it were the goal.

I want to encourage you to see failure for what role it plays in our life. Failure helps us to practice so that our success is not built on fear but the solid recognition of knowing what does and does not work. Failure allows a place for faith to become strong. It becomes like the root of a tree that is blocked from growing one way but will then seek another way to attach itself and become stronger.

Failure works because it brings out what is actually in us. We are shaped to succeed by failures. Failure squeezes out excuses and confirms our strengths. Failure works to allow our achievements to be built on solid stacks of failure and not fluff. I kind of think of failure as getting as low as you can go; like filling a hole with dirt that is packed down solidly so that whatever is built on top is able to stand because all the shifting was done previously. Everything is now solid, strong, and assured.

When one builds on failure you become oblivious to those who feel embarrassed, ashamed, and uncomfortable with what they see as the end of story.

Failure is a place you may stand alone and yet you are not. You stand with giants. Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Helen Keller, Les Brown, Tyler Perry, Tina Turner, and many others who understand that failures are the measure of one’s heart
to take failure as an education to move forward on your journey.

Failure makes it so that your success does not rise or fall upon the responses of onlookers.

The next time you feel that your failure is a negative, flip the script and know you are closer to success than ever before. The key is to make failure work by getting up and moving on!

I would love to hear your comments! Do you agree? If you do agree, why do you agree? If you do not agree, why?

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 Hi! My name is Vonzel Sawyer. I am a husband, father, and grandfather. I started blogging to share from my experience, knowledge, wisdom, instruction, and understanding to help persons maxamize and magnify the positive in their life. That is why I used the terms "maximum" and "magnification" and combined them into a single word "maxafication". Just like something can be magnetized or winterized. I want to impact people to live largely and fully each day!

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