THE TOUGHEST LESSON I HAVE HAD TO LEARN IN 2020

The hardest topic to ever talk about is failure. Nobody wants to read an article about failure or be associated with failure because nobody wants to feel like a failure. It is especially true for bootstrap people who have fought to be where they are in life. Winners do not like to entertain the thought of failure. And intelligent people feel intimidated by failure because failure makes them feel less intelligent.

Yes it hurts to fail, be it in a business, a relationship, a partnership, a marriage union or even in a job. Nobody ever wants to experience failure, especially if you are a visionary with a go-getter attitude. Failure is so dreaded that the pious sometimes feel as though failure is a sign that their faith in GOD was not sufficient enough.

But no matter who you are or what position you hold in society, the year 2020 might have made you feel like a failure in some area of your life. You may have lost your job. You may be facing divorce. Your business may be on the brink of bankruptcy. You may have even lost your faith in GOD. Or you might have lost a very dear person in your life. You may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown or you may have fallen into depression. Whatever your story may be, you may at some point felt like a total failure because you never saw it coming...you never saw the business crashing, you never saw yourself losing that job despite your exemplary performance. You never saw yourself job hunting at 50 years old and you never saw yourself drowning in debt at 20 years old. You are a shrewd entrepreneur but you never saw the signs that your business partners would betray you or that your investors would bail out on you. You thought your career was secure in a multinational yet they let you go without a second thought to it during downsizing...and the worst part of it is that they had made you employee of the month just a month ago.

We have all experienced failure in one way or another in 2020, be it professionally or on a personal level. But that is not the end of life. Just like challenges are part and parcel of life, so are failures. No matter how determined, intelligent, pious, innovative and passionate you are, you will experience failure from time to time. True, some of those failures are from mistakes we make but it is also true that some of the failures we face are beyond our control. Sometimes stuff just happens and we have to live with it. 2020 just happened and we have had to live with it.

Life is life. Stuff happens. There will be good moments, bad moments, sad moments and happy moments. We all go through the different moments, all of us without any exception. You will be up today, tomorrow you will be down. Today you will have a clear vision, tomorrow you will be uncertain whether you have what it takes to achieve the vision. A time will come where you will part ways with dear friends and valuable business partners. You will not always share the same views with your boss. The merger might not go through. The loan application for expansion may not be approved. You may not get that offer you were sure of. You may be the best CEO but still go through a divorce. Or you may apply for 3000 jobs before you finally land a job offer. Life just happens. And all of us are going through, will go through or have gone through something that cuts deep in our spirit, making us question who we are and what we stand for. That is life. It is normal even though it feels abnormal. So you have a choice; either you look at failure as an embarrassing, damaging and painful experience or as a wise shepherd who will reveal to you blind spots in your character and in life which books and schools will never be able to teach you.

You can never avoid failure just as you cannot avoid breathing. Sooner or later we all fail. Even the people you look up to today as role models have failed every so often. Failure doesn’t make you any less intelligent, rather you become wiser from the lessons learnt. It doesn’t make you any less determined or valuable, rather it gives you a better perspective of how you can go after your vision. Failure can be an asset that impacts wisdom and gives you a better appreciation of how much harder and smarter you need to work to achieve your goals and your dreams.

Are you forgetting where you started from? So what if you lost your job? You did not lose the skills that got you that job. So what if you lost a property? You did not lose the asset that matters the most, i.e your brain. You may still be mourning your loved one. Am sorry you had to lose them but you can never lose the precious memories you shared. Hold on to what you have left. You may be reading this and saying to yourself," I have lost it all Peter. I have lost everything and everyone that mattered to me." To you I say this," If all you have left is GOD, that is a strong enough foundation to start afresh and build yourself a better life."

Failure does not mean that you are a failure. It is when you decide to stay down that you become a failure. Do not let your loss extinguish the passion and vision in your spirit. Do not let failure crush your faith in GOD? Decide to be better and not bitter and start again. Forgive those who hurt you but most of all, forgive yourself. This time you are wiser, this time you know your blind spots. This time you know better and that is your secret weapon. You can't get a job, create one. You don't have connections. Look at your phone book and start creating your own connections. Use what you have left. Save what you can and make peace with what you cannot save. You are not your job and you are not your net worth. When you were starting off in your career, you built your net worth and network with less than what you have now. You can build it again brick by brick with better foresight and wisdom.

Some relationship are not meant to last forever no matter how much we want them to last. But others will last a lifetime. Fight for those you can and make peace with those relationships that cannot stand the test of time. This applies in business and in your personal life. No matter how much we try, most of us cannot always get 100% in all the subjects all the time. Accept that you are human with limitations. Seek GOD and make peace with what is beyond your control and one day you will look back and thank GOD that you went through what you went through.

2020 is the best and worst time to be in. It's the worst because of the things we have had to endure but it is also the best because this is the time to reposition and pivot our lives towards unchartered possibilities that may lead us to a destiny far better than the one we had in mind. Allow GOD to direct you during this time and let him direct you to a better path than the one you had in mind.

Key points:

1.     Life is life. Stuff just happens that we have no control over. Make peace with it and move ahead broken but stronger and wiser.

2.     Failure does not mean that you are a failure. Either you look at failure as an embarrassing, damaging and painful experience or as a wise shepherd who will reveal to you blind spots in your character and in life which books and schools will never be able to teach you.

3.     If all you have left is GOD, that is a strong enough foundation to start afresh and build yourself a better life.

What lessons have you had to learnt the hard way in 2020? Share with us in the comment section below.