Failure is the foundation for success!

Failure is the Foundation for Success

“It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures.”
Samuel Smiles

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill


“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Robert F. Kennedy

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Thomas Alva Edison

"Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions: they become your habits. Watch your habits: they become your character. Watch your character for it, WILL... become your destiny."
Unknown


Approaching 2007, what I thought would be the best and most successful year for us yet, I had a 4 month old baby, our business was on its last leg, our home was in pre-foreclosure, we sold my $50K Landrover, returned my husband’s Jeep to the bank, and we were forced to move in with my mother. I could not physically or emotionally afford to wallow in my own cesspool of failure as drowning was not a viable option. I want to have a breakthrough but I feel like I’m going to have a breakdown!

Perfection is overrated, control is just an illusion, and failure is the foundation for success. It is in the battlefield of the mind that we lose life’s battles. Life is like a beach, there are always waves hitting the shore, some big, some small, and a few tsunamis. We are constantly bombarded in life with either obstacles or opportunities; it is our perception that defines them and they can make us or break us. The tsunamis in our lives are the biggest test of the strength of our character and of our mental fortitude often revealing the truths of who we really are, stripped of the mundane trivialities of life that run amuck mentally and physically crowding our capacity to think and see clearly. It is in these times that we have the opportunity to emerge with real purpose, after experiencing the refiner’s fire, the phoenix rising from the ashes.

We learn life’s greatest lessons not on the mountain tops but in the valleys. Failure is not permanent; it should be embraced and celebrated for what it gives birth to in our lives. The lows in our lives are important ingredients in creating who we are and we can gain new life, wisdom, and new perspective with the pain that we suffer from failure, defeat, and even death. We need the lows and the highs of life to create the balance we experience as it also creates depth in our character that would otherwise leave us stagnant and one dimensional.