Your Failures are Your Biggest Lessons and Qualifications
A job requires you to be qualified…
Even to teach, you need to be certified.
Everything of value is now on a piece of paper.
But that piece of paper is only an entry point… The real test begins when you start doing, rather than just studying. That’s also when one may experience failure, and inadvertently get wounded.
When you place importance only on the degree or certificate, rather than the lessons learned, you become wounded, not wise.
But, failures in a job, career, love or life, can in fact become bigger lessons than any you learned in a degree or diploma course…and in fact make you much wiser.
That does not mean you aim at failing, it simply means you accept the failures in your life and learn from them…knowing that winning is not always in your hands, and life is not always a bed of roses.
This is easier said than done… And, that’s because we are constantly comparing ourselves to others.
But, while we envy someone else, someone else may be envying us…
Though, when we fail these thoughts don’t occur to us.
According to you, your failure is the biggest in your eyes… For someone else, he may feel he’s failed miserably in some aspect of his life. You may look at a rich man and think he is happier, but he may actually be fraught with more problems that you can imagine!
Thus, happiness is relative and transient…
The key is to stop comparing, and instead take responsibility for all your mistakes and achievements, and learn from them and move on.
Failure or success is a construct of the human mind.
All that matters in life are the lessons learned from it. More importantly, the ability to just look at life as is, without labelling it or identifying it in the way society expects us to.
When you see things as they are, there is no clarity, no division… What seemed like failure can be converted into success and vice-versa. Thus, the mind needs to go beyond these terms and live life to the fullest.
Life is your biggest teacher.
You may get divorced, bankrupt or whatever else… But, life will always find a way to balance things out.
The virus is a great example of how we’ve taken so much in our life for granted — our freedom, environment, other human beings and even our own health and life!
The pandemic is an opportunity for us to take a break, and reflect on how we have conducted our lives thus far…consciously or unconsciously.
Are we going to come out of the pandemic better or worse?
Life is throwing lessons or lemons at you all the time. You can ignore it, or make lemonade out of it… the choice is yours!
The biggest misconception I had was that life is predestined.
But soon I realised that you can create your own destiny…it lies in your hands. Because, finally, how you conduct yourself in life is what determines your path ahead, your future.
You may have no control over what happens to you, but how you respond to that event is completely in your control.
Thus, the ability to discern and conduct life consciously makes us creators of our destinies.
Life continues to throw many challenges my way.
While earlier I would get wounded and resort to frivolous ways, now with spiritual and meditative practices, I move around them more effortlessly, without friction.
Take challenges with a pinch of salt.
When you look back and assess the role of education in your life, especially at mid-life, you realise its contribution has been minimum…
In the future, employers should not just inquire about candidates’ degrees, but also take time to understand their failures, and how they’ve worked to overcome them.
Let’s uphold the life lessons one has learned above formal education qualifications, and the mark sheet… This will reduce the pressure on all the young minds in the nation!
Most of what you learned was learned on the field, playing the hard game of life!
Education may have given you a foot in the door at the workplace, but majority of your life has been navigated through the lens of your sensibilities.
A degree gets you a job…it may even land you a spouse, but cannot teach you how to manage both!
What helps you grow is how you manage and deal with your failures…
Do you hold on to them, or learn the lesson from them, and let them go?
My divorce made me more mindful of the fact that I was solely responsible for my life. It also made me more inclusive and tolerant of people from all walks of life.
I’ve now realised that, as a society we need to stop judging people by the school they went to, or the degree they hold. Let’s focus instead on how they’ve dealt with life, and the lessons they’ve learned.
When you open up your mind and heart to people with that lens, you’ll be amazed by what knowledge and inspiration you gain from them.
The remainder of our life should not be spent in chasing success at any cost.
Everybody teaches you how to succeed in life, but no one teaches you how to manage failure… Knowing how to manage failure is a wonderful quality for life and work.
Our education system expects all children to succeed.
But what if they don’t? Because not everyone will!
Perhaps, they will fit into the economic engine and earn a living, but again that approach just leads them to compare their prosperity with someone else’s — ‘If you don’t become richer than your neighbour you are a failure.’
The system will not change, but parents can!
It is up to us parents to go beyond the curriculum, and add elements to our children’s lives that aid their personal and spiritual growth.
From an early age, I have introduced my daughter to concepts like meditation and yoga… This gives her an added dimension to life, helping her look beyond life’s frivolities.
My daughter has also been privy to my successes and failures at work and in relationships. She sees that I try not to get wounded using the help of my spiritual tools.
I’m perhaps not the fastest one on the track, as everyone is engineered differently, but internally everyone has the same capabilities…
Everyone’s innate possibilities are limitless.
I may have not even explored 1% of my genius, but I want my daughter to. Thus, it’s up to parents to set examples for their children.
During the lockdown, I introduced my daughter to yoga, spoke to her about difficulties at work and even shared my future plans. I was surprised to see the solutions she gave me, when I opened up to her.
Children have clarity of vision as they are not clouded by judgements.
It’s probably time to learn from them, and take some pressure off their fragile shoulders. If we teach our kids to only succeed, when they fail, they will not know how to handle it.
But, when you tell them — ‘It’s okay to fail, just learn the lessons from it when you do’...they will embrace life opportunities with less fear, doubt or insecurities.
In failures you find life lessons that nothing else can teach you...
Use them as opportunities to explore possibilities…as blessings that say — ‘Wake up and look beyond.’
The pandemic has shown us clearly that we are not immortal, and we will get wounded emotionally, and even physically.
But, to get wiser is to know that immunity is built from within — from your uniqueness and individuality, from your ability to deal with life’s many problems…not just from a piece of paper!
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