Our greatest glory is not in never falling – Confucius

Today’s discussion circles around the quote “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall” by Confucius. In this topic, we touch upon failure, resilience and sheer internal strength which keeps you pushing towards the goal. Join our discussion with your thoughts and experiences to enrich this conversation

Confucius, the Chinese Social philosopher is known for his quotes on perseverance, self awareness, worth and living life at the highest quality. Amongst the many quotes he proposes, this is one of our favourites for obvious reasons.

Our Greatest glory is not in never falling

Failure is an overwhelming word. It seems like a constant internal battle with every step you take. The reason is pretty simple – it can have some debilitating effect. Failure is an emotion, a signal trying to convey something to us.

Apart from its genuine distraction, it also brings upon a few valid questions optimism tends to forget. In this discussion, we focus on the effects of this failure or shortcoming and use it to get the results needed.

Failure is often cast in a dark cloak with a lot of fear around it. If you want to achieve the success you need, it is time to debunk this cloak and look for the real answers.

EMOTION

As everything else, failure is an event, feedback about something gone wrong. You can either decide to grow from it or let it consume you. Instead, focus on the questions below:

• Listen to what this failure is telling you
• Objectively, what went wrong?
• How can you prevent this from happening again?
• How can you use this failure for your advantage?

At any point, whether it is a success or failure – you are given a result. You can either wallow in the outcome or decide to make the best of this. You cannot often change the cards you are dealt with. But, you can change what you want to do about it.

Rising every time we fall

People would have often told you this. If a baby falls, it cries for some time before making an attempt again.

You cannot let your feedbacks or failures haunt you forever. They have already happened. You are however, faced with a few other important question now – What do you want to do about it?

STOP

• You can stop what you are doing. You may even change your goal, but make sure that you are convinced with this approach. As with most decisions, there is no turning back.

• If you have decided to stop pursuing a goal, replace it with a better one. Make sure that this goal satisfies your internal desires of passion and dreams.

• There is no point sacrificing your goal to a smaller one. Your goal is to grow stronger and better at every instance offered to you.

KEEP CHASING

Or you can hold on to the groove of perseverance and keep changing. You may want to change your approach or your strategy. There is more than one way to arrive at your final goal.

• Don’t let the path be your concern: It is for the creative part of brain to worry about. The emotional part of your brain should focus on one thing alone. How do I keep my energies up when things are not going in my favour.

• How do I manipulate these feelings to give me the results I want? Yes, you may be sad for not getting desired results. But no one cares about it. To an extent, even you don’t!

• You want to achieve your result and that’s purely the essence of this quote : The greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. Do not be afraid of the cuts and bruises along the way. You have a long way to go and more to achieve, these small things keep happening.

As you keep your chin up, we leave you with the quote to think and do join our discussion with your comments. We look forward to chat more.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall

Confucius