'All the worst!'

Last week, I met a young person who was all excited in starting a new venture. He told me about his plans and big goals and was all charged up about it. 

'That’s great! I hope you meet your first failure quickly.’ I said. He was taken aback. ‘ How could you say such a thing?’he asked incredulously. 

‘You will find out soon enough’, I said . 

Which brings me to the question: ‘ Are we preparing our youth for failure?’ 

Lets face it; we are most likely to fail at more things we attempt than succeed at them. Failure- or being unable to get what you intended to - is a common occurrence.

And yet, a large majority of people don’t know how to cope with it. They get into denial, depression or worse still ; do something drastic - they blame others for their failures!

‘I would have succeeded if only my workers/ my clients/the government / my family/the bank…….’ They get into denial. 

And the next time they fail, the story repeats. 

So I guess that as much as we want them to succeed, we must help them learn to cope with failure and move ahead. 

When we see a successful person, we see the end result, not the hard knocks they took before they became what they are. When you see a Sachin Tendulkar cover drive, it looks effortless ; almost too easy. But only he knows the countless hours of practice - and the hundreds of poor shots he would have played - before he got it perfectly. 

We have all heard the saying, ' Failure is the stepping stone to success.’ If so, how come nobody likes to fail? How come the majority of people only have a wish to succeed , but are afraid to fail? We need to change this mindset.

How about we use the NLP Presupposition , ‘ There is no failure, only feedback.’

What this means is that we must view every (so called ) ‘failure’ as feedback. 

The stigma attached to the word ‘failure’ is so strong that it deters most people to stop trying one more time. 

So the next time you ‘ fail’ at something, tell yourself ,’ There is no failure, only feedback.’ And then focus on the feedback the situation is giving you. Every ‘failed’ attempt has a message, a learning , a feedback. We can see it if we stop getting sucked into the negative emotions of failure. Once you focus on the feedback/ lesson from the situation , we realise there is a way out. 

Which brings me to the next NLP Presupposition, ‘ If what you are doing is not working, do something else. Do it differently’.

And that is the essence of my next article. Stay tuned. 

If you liked this article, please share it with everyone you know who could benefit from it. I’d also love hear your thoughts and comments on the same.