Monday Musings -- Fantastic Failures!

In my own life, I have found the low points, when I failed at something, when I seemingly didn't have a place or person to where or whom I could turn, when I had barely two nickels to my name, when I hurt someone with my words or actions, did not come to define me.

Below, we learn how Zeno used terrible times in his life to become better through those experiences.

I have lived a blessed life. I have known that for many years and I am grateful. I'm not special. I don't have a treasure trove of talent. I am not a genius or all that innovative. Likely, I will never be famous or fabulously wealthy in terms of material matters. That is quite ok because I know I am loved, have a fair amount of financial security for which my wife and I have worked towards for decades, am forgiven for my faults, and learned to never give up.

Hard work, drive, discipline, and devotion to continuously trying to learn and becoming a better person are the secret spices sprinkled into what is my life. Yes, there is evil in this world, there are challenges and difficulties we will experience and endure that we don't desire or even deserve.

How we react to the "bad" and find ways to turn them to "good" matters greatly to finding not only contentment, but joy in life.

Many of those reading this know I've been thinking about writing a book sharing leadership lessons flowing from my 30 years in the United States Air Force. I started as a junior enlisted member and amazingly enough, later became a general officer. That journey wasn't my planned pathway, but I traveled it because so many opportunities and openings continuously came.

Along the way, I lived and learned some very difficult professional (and personal) lessons. More than once, I made massive mistakes that could have damaged, if not, delivered a death blow to my upward career trajectory. Fortunately, I worked for leaders who, when I failed, encouraged me to fall forward. To acknowledge the failing, then apply what was learned to become better and better as a leader.

Unsurprisingly, in so doing, not only did my career continue; those lessons also shaped and supported how I responded to others' failings. Rather than crushing careers, those were turned into educational experiences for those I was leading. Of course, there was applied accountability, but none of those failings, foibles, or fractures needed to become career coffins.

The National Football League Hall of Fame coach Vince Lombardi put it this way, The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall. Exactly! Whether in our personal or professional lives, the failures do not define or describe us. What we do following them might.

I have shared with those I have led many times that failure is essential to improving ourselves. Not that we seek to fall or fail, rather, my experience, rich and rewarding, informs there is so much more to be learned from those missteps and mistakes than always "winning". It helps create and cultivate a much more capable character.

Lean in and learn from mistakes. Fail Falling Forward.

The following is from Daily Stoic:

"Zeno lost everything in a shipwreck. His family business. His fortune. His taste for life at sea. You can read the full story in Lives of the Stoics, but suffice to say, it ended not just a chapter of his life, but the very purpose to which he thought his life was for.

Yet all was not actually lost. At a bookstore in Athens, Zeno discovered philosophy and would go on to found the school of Stoicism. Many years later, he would be asked about those days. “I made a great fortune,” he said, “when I suffered a shipwreck.” It was a different kind of fortune but perhaps a better one–since it continues to this day, benefiting not just Zeno and his heirs but all of us.

It’s probable that Zeno was paraphrasing Diogenes the Cynic, one of the early philosophical influences to the Stoics, in that quip. Diogenes didn’t suffer a shipwreck, but he had been exiled. Walking in Athens one day, he was mocked for his fate, but as always insults found no target. “But it was because of that,” Diogenes said of his exile (calling his attacker a wretch in the process), “that I turned to philosophy.”

Exile. Shipwreck. Bankruptcy. Getting fired. Being cheated on. Blowing up your marriage. Losing your license. Going to jail. None of these things are ‘good,’ they are certainly not things we would choose. But for a Stoic, for a philosopher, they can be good if they make you good. It is not unfortunate if one finds a way to make something fortunate from them, finds a way to make a fortune out of them."