Life After Failure

In a world where technology has given us effortless access to enter people's lives and dreams, we are easily driven more towards successes than failures. We invest our interest in staying up-to-date about successful people's lavish lifestyles, daily routines, and day-to-day activities, which eventually inspire others to walk the same path. The one thing we often overlook is the kind of hard work they had to put in or the challenges experienced before they finally hit the bull's eye. The question here is, how many of us find interest in learning about how life after failure looks like at each step for an ordinary human being? How do successful people transform their failures into stepping stones to get closer to success?  

I will not take an easy path here and talk about how crucial it is to learn from failures and how failures are a part of our lives. We all know this kind of knowledge, but the approach hasn't made any difference in overcoming life failures. No one likes to fail, and when we truly encounter failure, this knowledge doesn't help us come out of it. If not from information or knowledge, what is that one thing qualified enough to make a difference, you ask? I'd leave it up to your perception to find the answer to this question. But, I'd like to put my two cents in here and share the failures I experienced in my journey that taught me some of the most critical life lessons. 

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I'm 17 years old, and like millions of middle-class teenage Indian boys in the early '90s, I dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur one day. Belonging to the small town of Bikaner, Rajasthan, this is the first time I stepped out of my hometown for my college. Of course, I had to leave everything behind that is still close to my heart, but the distance brought me a step closer to experiencing the unwavering power of dreams. I vividly remember the day when I stepped into MNIT Jaipur's campus. It was on Nov 11, 1991. I have always been a studious kid, and my entire family had very high expectations from me. In fact, since the day I entered Jaipur, I developed very high expectations from myself too. 

In early 1997, my first practical step towards the entrepreneurial journey is gradually becoming real. After completing my engineering, I immediately came across a few wantrepreneurs headed on the same path. We conceptualized the plan to establish a production firm. I am working hard to do everything that needs to be done. I continued working for 14-16 hours every day, seven days a week, for more than two years. Even though I feel tired at the end of the day, the overwhelming energy and excitement building up inside me for my dream project take all moods and feelings away. It allows me to focus on the now.

By mid '98, I started experiencing a lack of acknowledgment from my partners' end. Eventually, I started feeling worthless even though I was putting in the most effort. Rather than talking about it openly, I kept working hard while gradually drowning in emotions that came from the point of no "existence." As a mechanical engineer, I was always drawn toward modern production techniques. My business partners and I established a firm that became fully functioning with a great product. We got a pretty good response from the market. I felt that the hard work I'd invest in to build the company would bridge the gap between us. 

Over time, the understanding between us kept narrowing down. In lack of open communication, my experience of being "taken for granted" kept increasing. Finally, one fine day in April 1999, I woke up with a very heavy heart, and I said to my father, "This is not going to work out fine, and I'm going to take a step back and restart my journey." My father, who supported me from day one, was taken aback. He did not know what to say next, but he immediately agreed to it. And my dream project came to an end. That Industry eventually got closed by May 1999.

I invested more than two years of my life into this and had most of my father's savings invested in the venture. But before I move forward, is that all I had lost in that venture? Of course not. I lost some of my most treasured assets, including my confidence, self-belief, vibrancy, and courage. This experience jolted down everyone in my family, and I got to face a harsh truth about myself that I was never a street-smart kid.

At times, innocence, intention, and innovation are not the only qualities you need to succeed in life but also a more realistic understanding of your surroundings.

One of the things I realized is that we tend to imagine different scenarios that actually aren't real once we fail. Sometimes, we end up imagining a perfect comeback after a failure, which is nothing more than a series of emotions attempting to control our surrounding's decision-making. Or, in simple words – developing wishful thinking. Not to mention the life is not one day, someday approach, but it's always in the moment of now. We often come across repeated dialogues such as – "We should learn from our failures," "We should keep moving," and other obvious conversations, but that's not how real life works. In real life, we want to get away from the world where we witness failures, which happened to me too. To justify our loss, we want to blame things outside. We either blame people or the circumstances around us, but that never takes life forward. I did the same. Rather than taking responsibility and doing something about it, I started blaming the outside world. That never helped, and I eventually wasted another couple of years of my life. It would have continued if I hadn't taken action to figure out what was missing that'd make a difference in my life.

Ever since I was a kid, I held authors in high regard. The emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth the books provided has helped me grow my perspective about life bigger and deeper. In early 2002, I read a book in which the author emphasized how not taking action is insanity. Some of the lines from that book made me realize that I had not taken any action to regrow after the first start-up failed. While reading, I also got present that even when the Industry was running, I did not take action to fix what was not working out. Looking back now, I could have initiated an open conversation; I could have set the expectations straight; I could have worked on my effectiveness, but I did none of that. Once I failed, I constantly thought and blamed the surroundings and took actions based on fear, which clearly did not produce results. 

After going through these learnings, I brought myself back into action. Initially, it was a question of survival for me; I had to take care of the finances and other family-related situations. So, I started teaching mathematics, which I continued for two years until 2004. Once my finances were coming along, my friend Jeet called me and proposed to start a business together. I shifted to Jaipur to create a real estate business to explore life further. As real estate is a capital-intensive business and we had limited resources, I had enough time to explore more. So, Jeet and I ventured into starting a travel agency, but that did not produce the expected results. While we were working on our venture, Jeet kept suggesting various books and leadership programs. 

In the pursuit of taking action, I also took distribution of a telecom major. Although it was working fine, this was not the kind of business that I had on the top of my mind. Only when Jeet entirely came out of his corporate job, the idea of starting an IT company came into the picture, and we started "InTimeTec." Over the last 12 years, "InTimeTec" has become a matured platform that empowered numerous lives globally to help them live life powerfully. The quest of driving people out from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset is a never-ending one.

When I look back now, I was na?ve, studious, and definitely not street-smart. However, the nature of life on earth perhaps wanted to teach me something that somehow led me on the path that I am on now. It's been 12 years since we started InTimeTec, with a simple vision to create abundance in the lives of everyone we come across. Today, I'm very thankful for every nightmare I lived all throughout my entrepreneurial journey. The effort I had invested in everything I ever did and the sense of wisdom I got from my failures. This includes the initial years of my struggles at InTimeTec, as I came from a non-IT background. But, with Jeet leading from the front and having consistent and open conversations, I could overcome all the hurdles and joined the party fully to make a difference for people around me.

One of the most unfortunate events an entrepreneur can encounter is going down memory lane and letting the mind exaggerate past failures.

Undoubtedly, failure is never an easy experience to absorb for a human being. But when people cannot get out of the complaining zone, the mind becomes the source of negativity. They become vicious for the people around them. Family life becomes difficult, and the whole living standard is narrowed down to mere survival. 

My failures taught me a very profound lesson that you can either operate from the world of reasons/complaints or operate from the world of actions. I drove from a world of reasons and objections for many years, and it never brought me the kinds of results I wanted to produce. I never felt peaceful when I was leading my life with excuses. In a world of actions, success or failure is just a state of being that revolves around consistent human effort. 

Observe! Learn! Act! Ever since we built InTimeTec, this has become my mantra. It did wonders in my life throughout my journey lately. So many people call me fortunate, and I agree with a smile. And this can be true for you also. The only thing that you need to do is to take action and stay in action. Luck is when opportunity meets with preparedness, and you can only be prepared while being in action. 

It took me more than a decade to bring myself entirely out of my first failed start-up experiences. That's how life is. Still, the only thing that we can do is to take action. Those emotions just don't go away so quickly. If you're in a state where things are not working out for you, believe that everything happens for a reason and keep taking action. Honestly, that is the only thing that helped me when everything I ever worked hard to achieve seemed to be getting away. I have my learnings from failures, and being a firm believer of action, I could move on. Nothing of what I'm living today would have been possible by mere thinking. Perhaps, a greater good for a brighter future demanding your patience and consistent effort. Many aspirations and expectations are tied to you from people who love you for who you are and who you are not. Your actions and one smile can create a better world for you and the people around you. 

You will witness a time when you will look back and realize why something happened the way it happened. Your moods and feelings will never leave your conscience. If you're feeling sad at any point, take time and feel the emotion, but do not stop doing what you need to do. Keep all the choices aside that give you all the reasons not to take action and continue taking action anyway. One of the things you need to keep in mind at all times is not to let the feeling of sadness, fear or instant gratification transform your life into suffering. The feeling of sadness, frustration, emptiness, loneliness, and fear will always come and go. Still, the probability of you living a powerful life will depend on your potential to not allow these emotions to consume you.