ALL OF US LEARN FROM OUR FAILURES AS WELL AS SUCCESS : There is no finality about failure, said Jawaharlal Nehru. Perhaps, that is why learning from failure is easier than learning from success, as success often appears to be the last step of the ladder. Possibilities of life, however, are endless and there are worlds beyond the stars—which is literally true. What appears as success in one moment may turn out to be a failure or even worse in the next moment.
All of us Learn from our Failures as well as Success ESSAY
There is no finality about failure, said Jawaharlal Nehru.
Perhaps, that is why learning from failure is easier than learning from
success, as success often appears to be the last step of the ladder.
Possibilities of life, however, are endless and there are worlds beyond the
stars—which is literally true. What appears as success in one moment may turn
out to be a failure or even worse in the next moment.
We
often do not know what is failure and what is success ultimately.
There
are examples of people who became wealthy but renounced all their wealth
achieved after a lifetime’s effort. The kings like Bharthrihari gave up their
kingdoms because of their failure in love. The Duke of Windsor abdicated the
throne of England
While
we can see our failures clearly, success is prone to blind our vision. Yet, the
time-world that we live in is a mixture of pain and pleasure, sorrow and delight,
light and darkness, success and failure! Success as well as failure are parts
of our life and experience. We gain from both and also lose from both. Failure
dejects us, success delights us, but experience accretes them both. After a
while, success also loses its shine just as failure loses its sting. An aware
person learns from both successes and failures of life and begins to see life
what it is.
Most
people try to achieve what they want. They either fail or succeed in getting
what they want. In a difficult world trial and error become our way of solving
life’s problems. Yet there are escapists who avoid undertaking the trial
because they are scared of meeting failure or committing the error. They,
perhaps, consider making mistake as wrong and harmful but the fact is
that, for most of us, trial and error are both helpful and necessary.
Error
provides the feedback for building the ladder to success. Error pushes one to
put together a new and better trial, leading through more errors and trials,
hopefully, finding ultimately a workable and creative solution. To meet with an
error is only a temporary, and often necessary part of the process that leads
to success or well-earned achievement. No errors or failures, often, means no
success either. This is more true in business and while handling an on-going
project.
According
some business training programmes, an early partial success is not commended.
In fact, early success in a long-term project is regarded as a premature
outcome of good efforts that is likely to cause complaisance and slackening of
effort to achieve the ultimate objective of the project. Early success might
tempt one to get fixed on to what seemed to have worked so quickly and
easily and stop from looking up any further. Later, maybe, a competitor will
learn from the slackened ‘achiever’ to further explore for larger possibilities
and push on to find a much better solution that will push the earlier achiever
out of the competition.
Yet,
there are many organisations who believe in what they call ‘culture of
perfection: a set of organisational beliefs that any failure is unacceptable’.
Only a hundred per cent, untainted success will be acceptable. “To retain your
reputation as an achiever, you must reach every goal and never, ever make a
mistake that you can’t hide or blame on someone else”.
But
this is a flawed strategy because the stress and terror in such an
organisation, at some point, become unbearable and lead to attrition. The
ceaseless covering up of small blemishes, finger-pointing and shifting the
blame result into rapid turnover, as people rise high, then fall abruptly from
grace. Meanwhile, lying, cheating, falsifying of data, and hiding of problems
goes on and swings and shakes the organisation from crisis to crisis and, ultimately,
weakens it irreparably.
Some
ego-driven, ‘experienced’ achievers forget that time and environment have
changed and demand other kinds of inputs. A senior lecturer of ten years’
standing was rejected and one with only one-year experience was selected. When
the senior protested, selectors told him: “You too have only one year of
experience—only repeated ten times. The selected lecturer has fresher and more
relevant experience.”
Balance
counts and a little failure may help preserve one’s perspective on success.
Finally, life is more than a count of failures and successes, as a humorist
said: “try and try—only twice, the third time let some one else try” is yet
another way of looking at life’s struggle.
COMMENTS