Muhammed Akorede Olaiy... 1 year ago

@M.a-cool 8 min read Write a comment #personal-development

I'm A Proud Failure

I'M A PROUD FAILURE: THE SWEET SECRET OF ACCEPTING FAILURES!...

You are a failure! I'm sure that's the last thing many of us wanted to be said to us by anybody because we all hate that statement. Believe it or not, if I'm called a failure by someone, I will both be thankful to the person and also be happy at the same time, because when someone calls you a failure, the truth is that that's their own way of telling you that you need improvement in that particular thing that you are doing. Even if someone has never called you a failure, of course, when you fail, you know within yourself that you have failed. So why should you get mad or feel bad when someone calls you a failure? See, let me tell you something.

No matter what you want to do in this life, if you are not failing, that means you are not even doing anything. Because the fact is, when you are just starting out in life, there are some steps that you will take that will lead to bad or even worse consequences. When this happens, don't feel down or sad about it but instead, look out for the lessons the failure has come to teach you and apply them in your next move. One thing many of us don't understand about failure is that failure happens for us to learn from the mistakes that lead to that failure and apply the lessons in our next attempt. So, instead of you getting depressed about something that you did and failed, my friend, just sit down and think about the steps you have made that led to that failure; trust me, you definitely find out maybe at least one or two things that you did wrong. Go and read all the histories of all the people who are great in life today; they are all failures at one point or the other in their lives. None of them did it once and made it once.

In fact, I call myself a proud failure, and yes, I'm a proud failure, and the reason is that I'm not perfect in whatever I'm doing; for this reason, I'm bound to make mistakes, and of course, I can fail at some things at times. But for me, if I fail at anything, I will look deep to find out something to learn from that failure, and trust me, I always learn something. I have experience failures multiple times, for example, when I finally set to focus on my writing career some years back, I started with a blog on WordPress using a free hosting plan, but along the journey, I finally realized that a free WordPress hosting would not allow me to fulfill my dream as a writer. So, what's the result? Of course, the result was that I abandoned the blog and switched to a paid hosting service with a Nigerian web hosting company.

Before I go further, I want you to see clearly that this is one failure for me, but if you look at the case very well, you will also notice that I also made a mistake, and that's what led to the failure of that blog, and the lessons I learned was that I wouldn't go far in my journey as a blogger with the free hosting and immediately I applied that lesson I have learned by switching to a paid hosting the service. Now back to the story, after purchasing the hosting plan, I started my second blog, hoping to have a breakthrough with it, but my friend, do you want me to tell you the result? I failed again. In fact, I failed woefully, and finally, I closed down the blog, but before I shut down the blog, I learned that I was doing some things wrongly. For example, I found out that I was targeting a larger audience beyond what my capacity could handle.

I also found that to make the blog deliver the kind of results I desired; I will need to prepare and research keywords even before writing any post. When I found out about all these, I knew to continue with the blog, it would take almost forever for me to be successful, so I shut it down, and I have never done anything with blogging since then. So, what's the moral here? The moral is that I failed, but at the same time, I learned my lessons; I learned what my mistakes were that resulted in these failures. So, if I wanted to start any blog, for now, I would definitely shine because I've learned the best ways to do it through my mistakes and failures. So, don't look at failure as a bad thing but instead as a sign that you need improvement on that thing you are doing. There are more of my stories I can reference about failures, and that's why I called myself a proud failure because in my failures lies the great lessons I needed for my improvement.

Now that you know that having failures isn't a bad thing, I will also like to mention to you that even though there is no guaranteed way to boycott failure, of course, there are ways you can follow to reduce it to its least possible occurrence. So, how do you go about it? You see, one good thing about this life is that success leaves clues. This means that in whatever that you want to do, there are some people who have done it already, and for that reason, these people, of course, have more experience, more knowledge, and more understanding than you do. So, what you need to do is to consult the wisdom of such persons, seek advice from them, ask questions from them, and in fact, you can make them your mentors if you have access to them and if you don't have access to them, there are books you can read on that subject. Reading three to five books on any subject before you begin will save you lots of time, energy, and even resources.

As the internet has even made things easier for us, with just a few searches on Google, you will have access to thousands, if not even millions, of information about a particular topic that you want to learn about; what of YouTube, online courses and master classes, there are just lots of ways for you to go in reducing the potential of your failures. The reason why most failures happen is because of the knowledge and understanding that you lack about a particular thing that makes you a failure. So, to reduce the potential of your failure, you will have to acquire more knowledge and understanding of that particular field, and definitely, you will come out with flying colors because with that, you will experience lesser failures compared to not knowing anything about the subject.

From now on, be ready to experience failures at everything and anything you do and make to accept them whenever they do happen. Learn the lessons from them and, most importantly, shield yourself ahead by seeking enough knowledge about anything before you start. At this Junction, I will like to raise my pen and continue my life's journey of both failures and wins; remember that's what made me a proud failure!

See you next time!