Until You Succeed

I stare at a blank page in front of me hoping to find the light of inspiration and the spark of an idea worth writing about. I’ve often heard and come across about three types of people – optimistic, pessimistic and realistic. The two extremes and the reasonable middle. One school of thought claims that if you remain constantly positive and - to quote what I’ve read - “if you want something badly enough”, you will achieve it. Another philosophy discredits this theory with the assertion that “wanting something badly” is not enough to actually achieve it. A poor person wants riches badly, but not every poor person in the world becomes rich. A blind person wants to see badly, but not ever blind person is able to see.

One commonality among most successful people is that despite a flurry of failures early on in their chosen field of work, they never gave up. If something didn’t work out, they did not become disheartened. They learnt lessons from their failures and tried something different the next time. There are very few successful and great writers whose first few manuscripts were not rejected by a score of publishers. Many flourishing entrepreneurs have built their businesses over the foundation of lessons learnt from a string of failed startups. Scientists and explorers learn a thousand ways an idea does not work before they find one way it does. Musicians and composers fumble through a maze of inharmonious notes and discordant sounds before they create something that is pleasing to the ear. Stand-up comedians have their jokes fall flat and face the collective ridicule of an audience before becoming capable of delivering a performance that makes people have a belly-ache while laughing. Actors and artists have seen theatres clear up while they are performing before they proudly witness a standing ovation for their performance.

People who succeed do not allow failures to bog them down. Failures are not seen as waste of time and effort, instead valuable lessons are gleaned from experience and used to do better the next time. The next time you do not succeed at something, see it as way things should not be done. Take that instance of failure, look at it from top to bottom, front to back, listen to what it says, feel its texture, inhale its aroma, and stack it in your library of lessons learnt. Turn over to a fresh sheet of paper, take a deep breath, hold your head high, tell yourself that this time you’ll do better and start working with everything you’ve got.