Friday, December 26, 2014

There is No Such Thing as Failure!

I've always thought people who refer to themselves as failures are way too hard on themselves. In fact, I feel annoyance at the word because I don't believe in failure, I believe in choices! :)

We have all been blessed with the opportunity to make choices throughout our lives. Just like everyone else, I love making my own choices!

While growing up, if someone tried to take away my choices, well, they would see a very independent and determined girl who would not be told what to do. Now I handle most situations like that much better as an adult, but my core self hasn't changed. I have been and always will be a strong-willed lady! If someone tries to take away my choices, I will "fight to the death"! (I don't advocate death, by the way. It's just a figure of speech. Ha ha.)

I simply view life as a series of endless choices. Every choice we make leads us one direction or another. Even indecision is a choice! Thus, we must own our choices.

Even if we're not satisfied with every choice we've made, we must accept the outcome. We mustn't look back and longingly wish that things would have turned out differently. We must not ever say, "Oh, I'm just a big fat failure." No, friends, that moment passed the second we made the choice that brought us to that point. There is no such thing as failure!

My statements aren't meant to depress or annoy anyone. I simply want to clarify that we should not live our lives in a wishy-washy state. We must live courageously! We cannot wonder what if, or wish, or pine, or wait for this or that to happen in our lives. Actually, we can do those things, we just have to be at peace with the consequences of our actions or inaction.

What I'm trying to convey is that we shouldn't view our lives as failures, no matter how hard, bleak, mundane, tragic, messy or unsuccessful they may seem. We must embrace our lives with our whole hearts and souls for we have absolutely made every choice that has brought us to this point!

Gratitude for every aspect of our lives is a happy, wonderful thing and is very needed! If we can't find gratitude for everything that we are, we simply need to make those choices that will help us be truly grateful.

I understand all too well when we might want to blame others for situations we find ourselves in because "it truly wasn't our fault," but even then—in that very momentwe have decisions just waiting to be selected! We can decide how we will respond. We can decide what we'll do next. There are innumerable options available to each of us through every choice we make! :)

There is truly no such thing as failure—only different choices. I hope every person will appreciate their grand opportunity for unending choices, make them wisely, own their lives, and live beautifully!


1 comment:

  1. In a 1910, two volume biography called “Edison: His Life and Inventions”, an anecdote was shared by an associate of Thomas Edison’s named Walter S. Mallory. Edison and his researchers had been laboring for five months, at that point, on the development of a nickel-iron battery.

    "I found him at a bench about three feet wide and twelve to fifteen feet long, on which there were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his corps of chemists and experimenters. He was seated at this bench testing, figuring, and planning. I then learned that he had thus made over nine thousand experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage battery, but had not produced a single thing that promised to solve the question. In view of this immense amount of thought and labor, my sympathy got the better of my judgment, and I said: ‘Isn’t it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven’t been able to get any results?’ Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: ‘Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.’

    Edison confirmed this anecdote in a 1921 article for American Magazine, written by B.C. Forbes:

    "I never allow myself to become discouraged under any circumstances. I recall that after we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed ‘to find out anything.’ I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way. We sometimes learn a lot from our failures if we have put into the effort the best thought and work we are capable of."

    Great minds think alike Adrie...

    ...yours and Thomas Edison's.

    ReplyDelete

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