Failure

Our Teacher

How do you view failure? When you feel you have failed at something, do you stop doing it?  Failure for many people is a dead end. They don't view it as a detour on the road of life. How you respond to perceived failure says a lot about who you are and what you will accomplish in life.  

Every failure is an opportunity to learn something new—to increase our understanding of the world around us. What have you learned from your failures? Do you use your failures as inspiration to work harder? Or do your failures become your excuse to quit and give up? Failure is a test of your character and your determination.

Playing sports taught me a lot about failure. In baseball, no batter gets a hit every time he comes up to bat. If a batter gets a hit three out of ten at-bats, he is considered to be a great hitter. In Little League, I was not a very good hitter despite my size.  My best game occurred two weeks after I had appendix surgery. I played three innings and had 2 singles.

In basketball, no player makes every shot he takes. If a player makes 50% of his shots, he is considered to be a good shooter. When I was a freshman in high school, I dreamed of playing in the state high school championship my senior year and winning. And while my team had a record of 28 wins and 1 loss, we never made it to the state championship. That final loss and failure to play in the championship became a symbol of my loss of religious faith.  And for years I held onto that symbol and let it guide my life.  What I saw as a failure was a very successful year. To play 29 games and only to lose the last one is a fantastic record. Many teams would love to have that kind of winning record, but in my mind's eye, I saw it as a failure.

What failures are you holding onto?  What failures do you need to let go?

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

— Thomas Edison, American Inventor (1847 - 1931)

Since we don't know the future, we often give up on our goals before we should. Sometimes the closer we come to achieving our goals, the more discouraged we become. The night appears to be darkest before the dawn. So the key is not to give up on your dreams but to hold fast and not let go.  

Thomas Edison held over a thousand U.S. Patents in his lifetime. He invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera, the stock ticker, the vote recorder, and the light bulb.  

In 1914, the phonograph factory owned by Thomas Edison burnt to the ground. Overnight he lost more than 3 million dollars. The next day Edison was walking through this burnt-out factory, and his son came over to console him.

Thomas Edison turned to his son and said: "There is great value in disaster.  It burns up all our mistakes.  Thank God we can start anew." Within three months, he built a new factory, redesigned the phonograph, and gave the world a brand-new phonograph.

Henry Ford built his first car inside a rented building. When the car was finished, he realized that the door was not big enough for the car to go through so he destroyed an entire wall. He did not let the wall stand in the way of test-driving his first car. Do you learn from your mistakes? Every failure is an opportunity to grow and change. Do you pick yourself up when something knocks you off your feet and begin again?

"In your hands, you hold the seeds of failure or the potential for greatness....The choice is yours."

— Zig Ziglar, American Speaker / Author (1926-2012

Life is about the choices we make and in our hands are the seeds of our failure as well as the seeds of our success. Which seeds have you chosen to plant today? Have you chosen to do the things that will encourage your talents and help you reach your potential or have you chosen to follow a path that leads to failure?  

Choose to plant seeds of hope in the hearts of others.