I failed. And here’s what I learned.

It is common to hear success stories and get inspired from them, but the real lessons lie in the failures. We are generally discouraged from telling our failure stories. We hid them because we fear what people will think about us.
Something that’s more important than what other people think about you, is what you think about yourself. Perception about oneself can make or break you. You can be hard and harsh on yourself for the failures you meet or you can tell yourself that it is okay to fail, but you must not repeat yourself. Analyse what happened and embrace the lesson.
This post is more for me than it is for you. So why am I putting it out instead of keeping it private to me? We all can learn from each other a little maybe.
You reach a point in life when you think, it is enough, you need to change your behaviour, your habits, because they are slowing you down; they are keeping you away from what you want to achieve. In an ideal world, I would have learned the lesson the first time I reached that point. But me being me, it has taken me about 52,354 points in life to come to terms with this fact that I need to change my habits.
Yes I made up that number, but I am sure I have been hit in the face with failures that many times for sure, okay maybe a little here and there.
Lets talk about the 52,354th time I failed, because that lead me to writing down this post. I want to make this a reminder for myself to actually stop and change my behaviour and habits for good.
August 29:
I came to know about a drive event of a particular car group that is happening on September 2 (4 days away). I have the details that I would need to make any preparations for the same. I spent time thinking but not doing anything. I had also volunteered for covering a particular location to capture the drive from.
August 30:
Did nothing about the event. I wanted help in thinking it out. I wanted help to cover the event. How could I drive my car during the event and also click good shots? I knew I needed help. I just didn’t know what to do, whom to ask.
August 31:
Still contemplating what to do because I don’t ask for help. Because I have always been let down by the people I have asked for help from. They always ditch at the eleventh hour. And by now I have become of the nature that I just can’t ask for help. And to add to this misery, my phone’s camera had to ditch me too. Every time I tried to open the camera application, it would hang with some weird pink scan lines, and then just crash. I tried every solution I found on the internet, nothing worked.
September 1 (T minus 1 day):
I couldn’t sleep at night with the thoughts about what will happen in the event. My phone is ditching me, my only weapon for the event. I want to do my best. At four AM, I muster up the courage to ask for help. I put out a story on my blog’s Instagram page. I ask people for help. I have thoughts like why would anyone even reply. What can I do to make it a really good experience for the person who would volunteer? What can I do to make anyone feel like replying to volunteer? I promised to share whatever little knowledge I have about clicking and editing photos/videos. And free breakfast with me! (What am I kidding myself? I’m no celebrity that one would love to have breakfast with!)
September 1 (T minus 12 hours):
To my surprise I had 4 people reply to my cry for help. I rushed around afternoon to get my phone fixed. That took away half of my day. And I had to also put up a leave from work for this.
I spent the morning and afternoon conversing, sharing details and getting details, while waiting for my phone to get fixed. After waiting for more than two hours, I got the phone back. They swapped the motherboard itself, so I had a fresh new phone to work with, with none of the apps I rely on. Then I was waiting in the evening for confirmations from those who replied. By night, all of them said “Sorry I can’t make it”. I was feeling sad, I tried to ask for help — again, and nothing turned out from it. But I was reminded to think about the fact that I asked for help from strangers and four people replied. That was me getting out of my comfort zone.
I was left with my fresh new phone, my only weapon. Now I had to think of other options. I fired up my old phone as backup, not knowing what exactly would I do with two phones and a car that I have to drive. I found my bike’s action camera, so I charged up it’s batteries through the night. Thinking maybe I could mount it up on my car somewhere and click some shots. Oh wait, if it is mounted, how do I click? Then a friend replied saying he would come along and help me. I was so relieved. But I knew he would have his own camera and audience to cater to. How would he click photos for the both of us? We could share, maybe.
September 2 (T minus 2 hours):
I barely made 4 hours of not-so-good sleep. I wanted to still do the best I could. I got up and messaged my friend to see if he was up. Message not delivered. So I called him up. “The number you are trying to call is switched off or out of coverage”. I just didn’t know how to react. I was hoping he would get up and call. But deep inside, I knew that was not going to happen. So I had two phones, an action camera that would barely last an hour, and a car. And no idea on how I would control everything — together. I gathered myself and everything I had, went to the car. Tried to figure out where I would put the action camera. Then I thought of trying to use my second phone to control the action camera. But how? How do I drive and click good photos and also stay alive and not crash?
T minus 0
I had almost given up. I had made a jugaad with an action camera + my spare phone + a bluetooth controller. But I still didn’t know if I could do this. I gave up. I went back home. My parents had woken up by this time and they were shocked to see me home. They asked me what happened and I told them how I was feeling. But they managed to put my hopes up again. I made my way to the event. I was already late by over an hour. By the time I reached my designated spot to cover the drive from, they had already passed by. My jugaad setup did work for me, but the drive was over. I couldn’t find the courage to go to the final point of the drive. I waited at my spot, and covered a few cars that made the journey back home after the event was over.
I failed on the organizer of the drive who invited me and had so many hopes because of the spot I had volunteered to take up and shoot from. I have failed on my friend’s hopes, who have tried to make me punctual, responsible, organized and what not. I failed on my parent’s hopes that day, the ones that they gave me when I returned back home. I failed me, because I gave up — too early.
The Analysis
- I asked for help and I was let down. I won’t ask for help again. Right? Wrong. I will still ask for help when I need it. If I get it great, but I won’t bet everything solely on the help.
- I was under-prepared, unplanned. I could have thought of the jugaad that actually worked in advance. I thought of a way out when I had no way out.
- The phone problem — I can’t think how I could have avoided that. But I could gone in earlier and got it resolved and had more time to prepare.
- I was running late — as always. I have never been the punctual kind in my life. I am known for coming late — at school, at college and at work too. And because of my habit of always being late, I have missed a lot in life. I have missed a lot of opportunities, I have missed a lot of people. And these once lost, never return.
- Don’t lose hope and don’t ever give up. If there is stress, that’s to bring out the better of you.
The Lesson / road ahead
A thousand self-help books and articles will still not make a difference until you yourself try to make a real difference in your life.
I know a few things in life that everyone can work on. Heck every other “How to be successful in X days”, “These X productivity hacks will make you successful”, and “The X secrets of successful people” article also says these things. Reading them will do nothing. Acting on them will do something. Read less. Do more. Do more than you read.
A little list that everyone, starting with me should work on:
- Self discipline
- Punctuality
- Planning and Scheduling
- Create more content than you consume
- Understand the responsibility
- Self help & self care
- Making the phone work for you and not the other way around.
The above list is in no particular order, just everything that I know I need to work upon. How do you work on it? You know the answers already. Sit with yourself sometime :)
If you made it till here, Thank You for reading this. I hope this helps you too :) If you are interested, please follow my blog on Instagram here: https://instagram.com/thebestcarblogever
And to my boss, who I know will be reading this: Sorry for not working a lot today. I had to get this out. I know you will understand as you always do. Thanks for being the best and most chilled guy I have ever worked with. I promise to work on my punctuality this time.
