Welcome to this weekend. As an HR person I am very concerned about people and these times have brought out the best and worst of people. I want to speak to the individual today from my blog (written in 2016), just to address the million feelings of inadequacy that millions of people are going through.
I like to start off with definitions. Failure is the absence of success. So, what is success? The dictionary says it is the victory or triumph of a thing. The good outcome of a thing. This reminds me of a fact about New York crime fighters.
Apparently, when the anti- drug enforcement team are celebrating a huge drug burst, the anti-vice squad have increased work, keeping all the druggies who need a fix and are going crazy committing all kinds of crimes because the cost of drugs has gone up as a result of the drug burst.
This means that success may not be a universal word because what is recognised as success here may be the opposite in other quarters. So, for example, social media is good on some fronts but terrible on some others. Sometimes what was initially celebrated as a success may end up being referred to as a failure in the long run.
I remember when social media brought down a government, many hailed social media. However, the said country has become war torn and the jury is still out as to the success of the role of social media in the preceding anti-government attack via social media.
There is the example of marriages that go south soon after wedding ceremonies. Before the ceremonies, the families think they have been successful but when they go south, they think they are failures. However, in the cases of domestic violence even upon separation ,some families think they have been successful because at least their family member came out of the situation alive and not dead or maimed.
I don’t know if you can tell that this was not the way I expected this blog post to go. I was feeling a little down in the dumps because I don’t yet have a break through on one or two of my projects and was going to have a public pity party. Also, it is almost the end of the year and we tend to make all kinds of assessments at this time.
I am now seeing however that success has many shades and sides to it. So, I am not a failure depending on which side of the coin you are looking at. I can comfort myself by saying that I at least started a project. Many are locked in a comfort zone with golden handcuffs and they cannot see they are prisoners. (Again if this describes the always smiling lady at the check- out in your favourite store , then I hope she stays there because her smile is what people need sometimes).
I may comfort myself by saying the snail speed of the project does not mean failure as a turnaround may just be round the next bend in the road. I may comfort myself by saying that tomorrow morning is another day for me to change things and turn them around.
There was a king called David many years ago who experienced what he and the people at the time called failure. He committed adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers who was fighting at the war front. When the lady got pregnant, King David tried to cover up by giving the soldier an exeat from the war front to visit his wife.
Even though the soldier came home he refused (from a sense of duty and team spirit with his fellow soldiers still at the war front) , to sleep with his wife thereby defeating the whole purpose of his been brought back home. This meant that the lady could not pass off her pregnancy as her husband’s. To further cover up King David sent the soldier back to the most heated part of the battle and engineered his death.
He married this lady and she had a baby. The baby eventually died and King David became depressed. He wrote a popular verse asking himself why he was so unhappy.
A few pointers here. When you are feeling like a failure you need to acknowledge that feeling and ask yourself why you are feeling that way. When you think deeply (again, thinking is a dying but essential art) you will get answers that will help you move forward. Do not get stuck. Try to retrace your steps so as to see where you went wrong. The mind is powerful and can play games on you. (This is true, go and read about the right brain and the left brain).
This project or whatever, may not even be for you. You may need to take another path that you can use your same skills and passion for, but just not this particular thing. Be careful not to be too all over the place. You may be trying to do too much. When I was younger , you got points for “multi-tasking”, now we know that even though you may do two things at the same time, you are not likely to do them both at the same level of quality. You may also be killing yourself with stress and cortisol.
Is it possible that you are not looking at the coin from the right angle? So to go back to King David, even though his affair was not a good thing in the end because of introspection, he repented and himself and inamorata had a child that is now known as the wisest and richest man who ever lived.
Is it possible that you are not patient enough to see the success that is not visible right now but is actually there? Who do you surround yourself with? This project may not mean much to them but mean the world to someone else. You may be trying to serve the wrong people.
I watched an Oprah show once and she said everybody always wants to know how they had done on the show at the end of it. Even the most influential people. We are, most times, so concerned with public opinion. Maybe the public does not know much about much or maybe you are not asking the right public.
Apparently, the man who invented the contraceptive pill died a pauper, almost unknown and unloved. Over the years there have been mixed feelings about his invention, which has now been proved to help keep cancer at bay in the women who use it.
When King David had asked himself the hard truth of why he was so unhappy, he made a wise decision to always put his hope in Almighty and always praise Him. Why should he bother with this, after all Almighty was there before his predicament of seeming failure?
He had however read Almighty’s words that say if He (Almighty) is on your side, you may trip seven times, but you will always get back on your feet. Almighty’s words are truths that you can take to the bank because they are everlasting.
This is not the time to throw in the towel. Go back to the drawing board. The world is waiting for your input. You are extremely important and precious. Don’t waste your time pity partying. It is an expensive venture and not fulfilling in the long run.
To answer the question, no you are not a failure but a success about to happen
