Things to Think About 036

“Errors are the portals of discovery.” James Joyce, Ulysses

When I speak to university students and young professionals, I am often asked, usually by a professor or event organizer, to address the topic of failure in my remarks. “Why?”, I ask. “They don’t understand that it’s not the end of the world to have a setback or a failure,” is a common response. I have written quite a bit about failure in my newspaper column and books — my own failures as well as others — and, the key lessons in every error, setback, or failure are always the same: what did you learn from it and how will that change your behavior and approach the next time? Failures can teach us so much, if we just take the time reflect as opposed to assigning blame to ourselves, circumstances, or to others. Failures can teach not only about perspective — how to approach something differently — but our reaction to failure helps us see who we really are and what we need to work on to further develop ourselves such as resilience, patience, discipline, and acceptance, to name a very few. So, the next time you experience something that feels like a failure or a setback, stop, step back, remember Joyce’s words and use them to move yourself to the next level of being the best you you can be.

Till next time…