What Failure Is NOT

What Failure Is NOT

Quite frustrating but till to date, there is a sweeping disconnect when we start talking about FAILURE.  Some disconnects tell us that FAILURE is missing the goal we attempted, that FAILURE is falling short in terms of distance, that FAILURE is incurring a shortfall in terms of the required elapsed time, that FAILURE is ending up with an output that missed the specifications that FAILURE is submitting an output that failed to meet the pre-set quality criteria💴💵💷

Truth is, the wisdom of learning from FAILURE is incontrovertible.  Yet, this gap is NOT due to a lack of commitment to learning.  WHEN we try to ask people to reflect on WHAT they did wrong and exhort them to avoid similar mistakes in the future, we would sometimes hit a WALL. That wall of resistance.  Why that WALL?  First, FAILURE is NOT always bad.  In our life, it is sometimes bad, sometimes inevitable and sometimes even good📗📘📙

Secondly, learning from FAILURES is anything BUT straightforward.  WHO says that once you stumble, you'll instantly have that instant FIX when you rise up?  Fact is, we need new and better ways to go beyond lessons that are superficial or self-serving.  That means, jettisoning our OLD HABITS and notions of success and instead embracing FAILURE's lessons.  What follows next is the BLAME GAME.  And this is when FAILURE and FAULT are virtually inseparable in the equation.  Even children learn at some point that admitting FAILURE means taking the blame, sometimes wallowing its impact📌📌📌

BTW, to quote a favorite one-liner in the corporate world, NOT ALL FAILURES ARE CREATED EQUAL.  A sophisticated understanding of FAILURE's causes and contexts will help to avoid the BLAME GAME and figure out learning from FAILURE.  Although an infinite number of things can go wrong, we should NEVER lose grip of that mindset of learning from FAILUREs.  Failing which, we would have FAILED in FAILURES💊💊💊

Just today, I got bogged down with an issue with our home security camera whose SD card cannot be detected.  I had to exhaust all options, isolating the problem, even going to the extend of buying a new SD card on the assumption that its existing SD card is defective.  Lo and behold, I proved myself wrong with that assumption and with my BACK AGAINST THE WALL, I decided to reformat that suspected defective SD card and voila, it worked❗❗❗