FAILURE, THE SPRINGBOARD OF SUCCESS

By Randy Thompsons, Author

Its better to make a thousand failures than to be too
cowardly to ever undertake anything.
-Clovis G. ChappellBack when I was 27 years old, I was depressed from losing all my resources,
time and energy in a failed business venture. I was discouraged, but not
defeated. I knew that I needed to try again and keep pursuing. I knew that I
needed to have a tough skin and not let past failures keep me wallowing in
self-pity. I failed but my life did not fail me, that alone struck confidence in
me to push forward. I have realized that the most fatal condition is death,
not failure. When you die you have no opportunity to try anything again, but
when you fail you can try again and continue trying.
Failure is a major attribute of pain which most people would not like to be
associated with. Failure is not an option to success. Its something to shun,
but its also an impermanent setback on a bigger significant course. Failure
does not happen because we are imperfect, because perfection feeds on
failure; the more you encounter failure, the more you learn and grow. How
much you learn when you fail determines how far you go in creating success.
It was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn your statutes.
Psalm 119:71
Everybody encounters failure at one point or the other. What truly matters is
how you react to and learn from that failure. Henry Ford once said, the only
real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
It is obvious everyone will cling to success and say goodbye to failure. Failure
is a necessary stepping stone to achieving our dreams. Our instinct is to be
ashamed of failure, may be because we do not like how it makes us feel
humiliated, as though we have done something wrong. As a matter of fact
you do not learn anything new if you do not make new mistakes.
It would surprise you to know that, Failure is the fulcrum of success. Failure
is the fundamental element of success. True greatness is embedded in
failure. If you have not failed in anything, then you have not tried anything
yet.
Failure is the measuring tape of success. If you want to know how far a

successful person has gone in terms of achievement, check the number of

times he has failed. Failure does not make people fail, it makes them refined.
The test of failure is persistence and perseverance. Failure is barely the
opposite of success, and it is not a disadvantage, but rather, a gain. Failure is
a lecturer in the classroom of pain. Failure doesnt grow pain, it grows gain,
because it gives you the opportunity to learn. Its a learning platform.
You have to come to your closed doors before you get your open doors. What
if you knew you had to go through thirty-two closed doors before you got to
your open door? Well, then youd come to closed door number eight and
youd think, Great, I got another one out of the way. Keep moving forward.
~Joel Osteen~
Bill Gates is now one of the worlds wealthiest individuals, but he did not
earn his fortune in a straight line to success. Gates entered the
entrepreneurial scene with a company called Traf-O-Data, which aimed to
process and analyze the data from traffic tapes (think of it like an early
version of big data).
He tried to sell the idea alongside his business partner, Paul Allen, but the
product barely even worked. It was a complete disaster. However, the
setback did not hold Gates back from exploring new opportunities, and a few
years later, he created his first Microsoft product, and forged a new path to
success.
Talk less of Walt Disney, who was discredited as someone who lacked
creativity. One of the most creative geniuses of the 20th century was once
fired from a newspaper because he was told he lacked creativity. Trying to
persevere, Disney formed his first animation company, which was called
Laugh-O-Gram Films. He raised $15,000 for the company but eventually was
forced to close down Laugh-O-Gram, following the closure of an important
distributor-partner.
Desperate and out of money, Disney found his way to Hollywood and faced
even more criticism and failure until finally, his first classic films started to
skyrocket in popularity.
The sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, is regarded
as one of the greatest presidents in the history of the US. And yet his
beginnings were not exactly smooth. A humiliating demotion in the army (he
went to war as a captain but returned as a private which is the lowest rank in
the army), a series of failed businesses, and repeated defeats at elections
could have broken the toughest of men. Yet he persevered to occupy the

highest office of the land.

The man who is believed to have revolutionized industrial production in the
20th century, Henry Ford, suffered many a loss in business. Failed businesses
and bankruptcy did not discourage him from trying to build one of the most
successful car companies in the world.
All these high achievers mentioned above had sustained various degrees of
failures, but nothing moved them. Their dreams were not derailed, they
persevered until they accomplished their God given potentials. They had
obstructions on their way, but that was not an excuse for them to stop
pursuing their destiny.
Sometimes, before we even encounter actual failure, our anxious thoughts
make us feel like one. We think what if it doesnt work? What if God doesnt
answer? What if Im rejected? etc. We must not let fear overtake us, but trust
in the Lord.

FACTS ABOUT FAILURE

Failure is an Opportunity
Failure is not a problem, but not taking the opportunity to learn from it is. Its
a platform for rejuvenation and re-examination of oneself. It is an opportunity
to make things right that went wrong previously. Many successful people
have experienced some kind of failure and they build on those lessons. Do
not get worked over why it did not work. Learning to fail means learning to
understand your mistakes and to work on them. Many fail but few learn.
Do people fall down and not get up?
Or take the wrong road and then just keep going? So why does this people
go backward, and just keep going.
Jeremiah 8: 4-5
Biblically, it is unacceptable to fall and not get up according to Jeremiah 8: 4.
Recovery from failure is the remedy not to fail again. It is an opportunity to
re-examine your life, so as to not repeat the same mistake you made
previously. God will help us when we fail, and He might even have a good
reason in allowing us to fail. We might not understand it at that moment, but
God will prove to be faithful in the end. Perfection is the total sum of several
failures. Excellence is the byproduct of successive failures. Nothing gets
corrected until failure is in view.
Failure helps you to grow better not bitter

The outcome of every mans failure is his current disposition. The present
you is determined by the past you failures, whether they made you better
or bitter. The strength and the maturity of a man depend on how he is able
to handle failures. Do you grow bitter or better when you encounter failure?
Instead of crying all night over a failed marriage or relationship or a
terminated job appointment, put yourself together, stay strong and believe
God for a better opportunity. Situations like that make you tough and wise so
as to prepare and know how to handle the next opportunity.
There are several people who are wounded walking lions. Past failures have
made them too prone to bitterness; they get bitter at the slightest strike.
They blame their past for whatever position they find themselves in today.
They blame people for their failures and downfall. It is true that sometimes,
people may contribute to your downfall, but you must not rest there, keep
moving forward. Regretting and blaming your past is just inconsequential
and a waste of destiny time. When you focus on the tragedy of your present
situation, you miss the beautiful drama of tomorrow.
You had a failed business so what? If plan A failed, there are many other
alphabets. You are a school dropout, so what? Success has little to do with
education but more to do with God, passion and determination. Anything
glorious starts gloomy. Your darkest times are actually your glorious
moments in the making.
Failure cannot stop your brain from working. For your information, anytime
you give up trying, millions of people are in a haste to keep on trying. Dont
miss new opportunities by visiting your past. There are no new open doors
until there are closed past doors.
If the Steve Jobs, Henry Fords, Aliko Dangotes, Mensa Otabils, David
Oyedepos and many others, decided to stop trying as a result of the failures
destiny brought to their pathway to success, we would not have heard of
them. No one rises to prominence except he/she is a student of failure.
A man is not finished when hes defeated; hes finished when he quits.
~Richard M. Nixon~
You cannot pass in life until you let the past pass. When you look too much at
your pain, you deprive yourself of new chances. You will be failing in meeting
Gods expectations for your life if you do not get up and pursue what he has
placed within you. Do not waste time because you do not have the luxury of
it; as the four lepers said at the gate of Samaria, should we sit here till we
die? The die there means the collapse of your gifts and talents. It is a
forceful awakening question. In other sense, if you sit at one place for long,
the probability of your God given gifts manifesting is low. If you do not take

care, you may send that gift to the grave. GET UP NOW.
Peoples assumptions / opinions
Often, we are afraid of failing simply because we worry about disappointing
people whose opinions we value. Because of that, we do not attempt to
venture into anything. You might think to yourself, what are people going to
say when I fail in this venture? Would people still accept my personality?
Protecting your reputation just to satisfy peoples opinion, at the expense of
your progress in life gets you nowhere. Opinions from the crowd would get
you nowhere; they would only keep you inactive and hanging in life.
So when you are worrying about what are people going to say, rather focus
on why you should attempt to do something to transform your life and
status. What is God saying about it, not what others are suggesting or
saying? If you do not focus on what God wants you to do and follow others,
you will make serious mistakes.
The worst thing about taking failure personally and as a result, shying away
from lifes challenges is how it affects your self-esteem. For, sooner or later,
adopting such a pessimistic stance compels you to conclude that your
negative encounters in life signify something hopelessly negative about
yourself. Demeaning yourself this way will only help solidify a most
unfavourable self-image.