POSITIVE ASPECTS OF FAILURE

Dealing with Loss

ASENSE of failure is what generally makes people sad, depressed and hopeless. Here we highlight some of the reasons that make one negative and develop a sense of failure. Looked at from the bigger picture of life, these situations should not cause one to despair and can often lead one to greater success.

AFTER A MISTAKE
When one makes a mistake, there are two possible kinds of responses. The first response is to become regretful. One who is full of regret will become disheartened after every mistake becoming a victim of stress. It is also possible that one may lose courage and be unable to do anything else again. This is a negative aspect of making a mistake. But there is also a positive aspect of a mistake. That is, it encourages you to engage in introspection and self-reassessment. When you do this, your mistake will turn into a mistake-plus. A mistake-plus is bound to activate your mind. It will lead to brain storming emerging as a natural gift for you. It will increase your creativity and produce a thinking process that may lead to the capacity for a better re-appraisal of yourself and an increased ability to analyze things. A mistake becomes a mistake-plus when it awakens your mind. It thus enables you to re-plan your life.

OPPORTUNITIES ARE ALWAYS THERE
After losing the first chance, there still exists a possibility of achieving success. The law of nature is always with you. Our world is full of opportunities. When you fail to grasp the first one that comes your way, there is always a second one in the offing. Availing of it will prevent you from succumbing to frustration and will enable you to re-plan your life. Very soon you will discover that taking the second chance has probably brought better results than the first one could ever have done.

FROM FAILURE TO SUCCESS
Failure does not mean defeat. Failure can become a stepping stone to better things, provided you do not lose courage and subsequently re-plan the course of action. It is a law of nature that the scope for achievement will always be greater than the quantum of failure. No failure can stop you in your quest for success, provided you maintain your positivity. If your first plan fails, that, in a way is good news for you. For according to the law of nature, your experience of failure will activate your mind. It will open up new windows that were hitherto closed. Your failure will spur you on to work in a more effective way and to attain a resounding success. Thus, initial failure can often be a blessing in disguise.

NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES
According to the law of nature, there is always a positive aspect of every negative experience. The only condition is that one should not become negative or succumb to despair. Life is full of unpleasant experiences. There is no escaping them. But negative experiences are not evil phenomena. They are in fact a blessing, a kind of intellectual challenge. In such situations, it is better to wait rather than opt for a reactive approach. If you save yourself from becoming the victim of negative experience and do just one thing, that is, let nature take its own course, it would serve as a positive factor for your mind. It will certainly increase your thinking capacity and unfold your intellectual treasure. The only fit response when you find yourself in a negative situation with others is to forget the unpleasant external experience and on your own, take a fresh decision to improve your ability. Very soon you will find that you have gained more than what you had lost.

EVERYTHING IS TEMPORARY
Every dark night is a temporary phase in this world and the same is true of human difficulties. Every human difficulty is temporary in nature. Every difficulty is bound to disappear after some time. It is a law of nature that no difficulty goes on forever. So, you have to feed this simple formula into your thinking, ‘It is all but temporary’. Optimism should be the key word. Optimism means knowing that one will eventually be rescued; that the waiting period will only be temporary in nature. The only thing that can create a serious problem is for you to lose your patience or to lose hope or to forget that the situation is temporary.

When you save yourself from being upset, you are in a better position to keep your energy intact, to keep yourself from being a victim of frustration, for frustration is certainly a disastrous frame of mind to be in. At every point in life there are serious difficulties on the home front, the social front, the national front and the international front. The simple formula for facing these difficulties successfully is to think that, just like the human being, one’s problems also are only for a limited period of time. Moreover, difficulty has a plus point. Difficulty unfolds your hidden qualities; it is a boon rather than an evil. In fact, difficulty is only a state of mind. It is the mind where difficulties are created and where they can be killed too. So, in difficult situations, try to focus on your mind rather than on the difficulty. And very soon you will find that the difficulty has disappeared, first psychologically and then physically.