How To Fail Successfully
A kind and caring heart can open our eyes to the troubles of others, but dealing with those troubles only comes through our own self awareness. Matthew 7:3 NLT “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own”? 360 degree self awareness is a gutsy endeavor. While we are all pretty skilled at recognizing what we can do well, we are equally skilled at ignoring our ineptness. One single experience which can raise our awareness allowing enlightenment through is failure. Failure is a critical component of each life, but failing has no practical value if we deny it or blame others. One sign of maturity is a willingness to accept responsibility for failure, while a glaring sign of immaturity is the pointing of a finger. An eagerness to learn from our failures is major growth spurt. A kind and caring heart in the body of anyone who has learned from their failures is a multi-valued asset. It serves first to remove “the log” from our own eye, allowing us then to remove “the speck” from someone else’s.
Being an applied expert signals an advanced understanding of something. Since life expertise must include a personal dose of failure, there is virtually no room for arrogance or impatience from such experts. Young people coming out of great colleges, often display a degree of confidence which rides uncomfortably close to arrogance. Too often, what’s missing is their own humbling history of practical failure. One colloquialism born out of this dilemma goes something like; “those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach”. That’s a demoralizing concept and unfair to the best teachers. “Can do” is a product of conquering failure, while “can’t do” can have many explanations. With 20 years of education planted into my brain and another 20 of replanting the life applications of those lessons into new graduates, I can say that it took me way too much time to separate the know-it-alls from the gifted failures. Too many people “think” that they intuitively know God, and even more don’t “think” they really need to. That kind of inexperienced “thinking” is a foretelling of future harsh failings awaiting many. Failing tests, projects, assignments and competitions is a training ground for life. Accept that, pick yourself up, learn and move on. Ask God for help with each hardship and then ask yourself to assist others as He did with you. Only our Lord teaches from perfection, his disciples must all try and teach from failure. We’ll find that learning from life’s failures trumps learning learning from practice when the game really counts.
JC Calkins with COMMON SENSE 4 UNCOMMON PEOPLE
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