Blog

It’s very important to be talking about successes and failures. I like this quote for the reality – we won’t always make the right decisions. For me personally, I think far few leaders talk about the realities. Success and failure are often romanticized while the reality seems like a distant dream.  

On the other hand, today’s quote of the day presents us with a beautiful one from Ariana Huffington. The discussion focuses on three key points:  

1. Acceptance for failure 
2. How are we supposed to respond?  
3. How can we use this to our advantage?  

Along these lines we also touch upon the myths of everything else surrounding the romanticism of success and failure.  

“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”

– Arianna Huffington 

We won’t always make the right decisions: Acceptance  

I think the true mark of success comes from acceptance of circumstances. It may be preferable to live in a romantic world where things work for us. Dreams are easy to come by and the fantasy comes alive – the moment we close our lies.  

With that being a fantasy, there is a section of reality which says – it is all bloody hard work. I would have loved for these things to be easy, but honestly, they are just the way they are.  

The way I see it – we have a place to get to and there are hurdles in our path. It is up-to us to find a way to get around them and reach our successes.  

And yes, we will go wrong – quite often. But that just means that we ought to make mistakes sooner and quicker. I would like to relate this to one of our earlier discussions – fail fast, fail cheap.  

How are we supposed to respond?  

The next question is – how to an event of failure. Yes, it is a series of decisions or a single decision which would have led us there. But do we need to sit and lament about them? Possibly yes for a while. But we do not have our entire life to do that.  

We will need to get back on our feet. We ought to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions. But that is just the way it is. We make decisions, take actions and then there are results.  

It is up to us to see what we can do about these results. If we don’t like them – what changes can we make? I can understand that some situations are out of our control, but regret only takes us that far. It is not going to solve our problems.  

How to use it in our advantage?  

I think all these quotes are really about this. It is about a line of thought which gets us thinking to react in a positive dimension. In this instance, we won’t always make the right choices. Our decisions could go wrong. Rightly so – there is always so much to lose.  

But everything – even an outcome is a result. It might be unfavorable, but a result, nevertheless. If we don’t like it, we have to make the change. Denial, no matter how strong cannot give us any good results. Every outcome is a feedback. We can work on it and try to use it to our advantage. Einstein said – I never failed but found a way that it won’t work. Maybe we ought to do something similar. I wouldn’t go so optimistic, but you get the picture.  

It is a fight we have to put up for the things we really want. After all, nothing worthwhile ever comes free does it?  

Leaving with the lovely words from Ariana Huffington:  

“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”

– Arianna Huffington