Page 8 - JUNE SFM 2017

Can Failure be a Good Thing?

By Julie Carr
Recently, I was at a dinner event celebrating the outstanding achievements of youth in our
community. It was a lovely dinner, the company outstanding and the speaker impactful and moti-
vating. Then it happened.
About half-way through I suddenly became very ill. So much so, I thought I was going to
have to leave the dinner early and head home. I waited hoping it would subside. Thankfully it
did. On my drive home I was thinking about how odd it was that I became so ill, so quickly. It
was then that the memory hit me. A memory that had been dormant in my subconscious mind for
years. A memory that I had tried, unsuccessfully, to keep hidden and far away from my conscious
thought.
You see, a number of years prior to this dinner event, I was the Keynote Speaker for an Edu-
cational Conference in the very same room and stood at the exact podium as the speaker tonight
had stood. I have considered the entire experience an epic failure; One of my worst. The kind of
professional failure that one can hold onto for months or for even years. Potentially leaving you
crippled with fear, indecision and even doubting your own professional abilities.
I remember vividly vowing I would NEVER experience that again. And, I can say with confi-
dence I have not. Not because I have never spoke again. Quite the opposite. I used that experience
to motivate me to step up my game to become better.
You see, I believe with all of my heart and soul that a large of my life’s mission is to use my
voice and talents as a speaker. Much of what I possess is natural ability or raw talent. Yet, this is
not enough. Whatever your natural talents are they still have to be honed and worked out, often
through a process of fire, before they can become perfected and used greatly by God.
No one becomes great without struggle. No one.
That experience was extremely humiliating for me and quite frankly, it was so embarrassing
that I seriously questioned my calling. Telling God, “Are you joking me? I will never be able to do
this!”
However, I have learned to use failure as a valuable tool as I make my way towards achiev-
ing greatness. If you are fearful of failure in a particular endeavor you are embarking on, try these
three strategies. I promise they will help.
1.) Embrace the feeling. It may sound counterproductive, but embrace the uncomfortable feeling of
failure. Slowly begin to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable. It is the only way we are able to
move outside of our perceived perceptions of normal and create new levels of normal to break free
from our mental constraints.

2.) Let it go. Rehearsing failures in our mind will kill creativity and disable our ability to move for-
ward. Rather than looking backward, turn your head forward to the potential that awaits you. Do
so with confidence in your abilities to be successful.

3.) Become better. If you are making consistent attempts to move forward personally and profes-
sionally it is most likely a guarantee that you will fail at some point. Move from the emotional em-
brace to the intellectual embrace and learn from failure. Failure is a great teacher as to what works
and what does not work thus freeing us to concentrate on what does work. Ultimately, making us
more effective.

Failure can be one of our greatest teachers and mentors towards our success. Only If we allow it to
be. I know it has been for me. If I humble myself and learn the lessons from my not-so-great expe-
riences, they take me out of my normal and position me into what is now becoming my new normal.

Ask yourself these two questions;
What failure has kept me from moving forward?
What have my failures taught me about success?

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