FAILURE ?

OVERCOMING FAILURE

 

Failure is a given in life; expecting to sail through without it is unrealistic and sets you up to fall harder when failure does happen. Avoiding failure also prevents you from focusing on gaining the resiliency needed to cope with it, a vital element of bouncing back.

It is unfortunate that in societies obsessed with success and achievement, failure can be made to feel like the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. The reality is that failure is common but so is overcoming it and pushing through to more success. Even when failure occurs, there is always something to be learned from it. In these sessions we will learn a little about how to overcome failure through having the right attitude and letting GOD be in control. When you don't let the mishaps of life keep you down too long, then nobody else will be able to keep you down too long either.

Expect mistakes. Life's hard knocks are as common as life's successes. To expect the process of living to always be smooth sailing is to invite a lack of realism into your life. It happens to the best of us. Failure helps to create balance in your life and presents an opportunity for personal growth. Accepting the inevitability that things won't always go your way is an important part of avoiding becoming bitter and twisted, and prevents you from simply resting on your laurels and never pushing further to realize your full potential. •Learn to love finding out that you're wrong about something. That's not failure; it teaches you and is the path to finding the right way. Remember the saying “if god brings you to it he will see you through it”

2 Corinthians 1:7-9 Our hope for you remains firm. We know that you suffer just as we do. In the same way, God comforts you just as he comforts us. Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the hard times we suffered in Asia Minor. We were having a lot of trouble. It was far more than we could stand. We even thought we were going to die. In fact, in our hearts we felt as if we were under the sentence of death. But that happened so that we would not depend on ourselves but on God. He raises the dead to life.

 

Remind yourself that you are good enough. Not believing we are good enough rests at the heart of fearing failure. Failures serve as proof of this greatest fear, causing us to want to withdraw. However, this fear is not reality; nobody is perfect and everyone has failures. The real difference between people who become successful and overcome failure and those who do not comes down to how you manage failure and how you view it. Feeling inadequate is a common human feeling that even very public, very successful people feel but they don't let it keep them down. You are good enough; all you need is to give yourself the go-ahead to keep trying. Name some from the bible and now……2 Timothy 4:7 I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

Remain calm. Whatever you're feeling about a failure, don't lose your composure over it. Look at it this way – it won't make any difference to the outcome whether you blow your top or stay calm but it will take a lot less energy and maintain your reputation if you choose to remain calm. If you're really frustrated and angry, channel these emotions to motivate you to start again. • Don't take your anger out on others. It's not good to bottle up feelings, but you can't go around taking out your anger on those around you for no good reason. Go for a run, or a swim, to relieve tension and give you space to think and pray and read your bible. Just do something focused to distract yourself from the intense feelings until they calm. • Take your time. People don't usually recover from a large failure overnight. It takes time for the emotions to heal. That doesn't mean you're entitled to mope though. This time is better spent going over how to do it better next time and building up your resilience. Isaiah 40:31 But those who trust(wait on)  in the Lord will receive new strength. They will fly as high as eagles. They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not grow weak.

Forget about how other people view you. Not only will any very obvious failure soon be yesterday's news, but if you think other people are judging you (and maybe they are, maybe they aren't), it won't be long before they're too busy worrying about their own failures to sling mud at yours. After all, everyone's going to fail now and then; looking at someone else has a way of boomeranging right back, this helps to do away with constant criticism. What does it really matter what the critics think? Most of the time they have no clue what effort has gone into what you've done and what you're trying to achieve – it's all too easy to be an expert critic without knowing the inside information. •Allow each failure to serve as an opportunity to strengthen your determination in the face of criticism. This is a far more healthy response than giving in to believing the often nasty and thoughtless things other people can say. Matthew 12:36 I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, READ 33-37

Shift out of your head space. All of the negativity is in your head. The reality is that you will recover. And the bonus is that you will gain knowledge, insight, and experience – wisdom that only those who tried something can lay claim to. Step outside of your personal negative feelings and reach out to the people around you who care about you; enjoy their company and learn about how other people cope with failures instead of simply focusing on yourself. Give it to GOD. • Look at each failure as a stepping stone to a stronger self. Treat each failure as a gift of learning what not to do in the future. •Respect the humility that comes with failure. Too much success can sometimes lead us astray and cause us to grow an unwarranted sense of being infallible and feeling superior to others. Failure can knock the stuffing out of such unrealistic thoughts and help set you back on the right course. Romans 12:3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

Stop worrying, start laughing. Yes, the sun will come up again tomorrow. Yes, things might be miserable for a little while but how will worrying help? Think back to a time when you worried a lot. Did it make any difference? Most likely not, apart from giving you more wrinkles and gray hair. The greatest thing you can do for yourself during failure is to inject humor into your reflection of what happened. While there will be a period in which you feel especially tender, being able to laugh at yourself for mistakes can be an important part of the healing process, readying you for moving on again. Being able to say "Oh I did that, ha, ha" is part of putting failure into perspective. •Be very careful that you don't take on other people's mistakes or circumstances as being your failure. Humor is one way of telling you that you don't need to carry the world on your shoulders and that sometimes, things just happen, no matter what you do or do not do. Psalm 126:2 Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

 

Review what your failure has taught you. There are always things to take away from a failure. It might also be the case that you have made the failure seem worse than it is; partial failure is also partial success and if you can draw out what was successful and build on that, the sense of having failed lessens. Learning never stops. •Failure can help you discover your best self. Failure is a signal that you're willing to press on and discover new talents, reaching beyond what you know into what you don't know. •Failure is about mastery. It's easy to flip from one new thing to another and be a Jack or Jill of many skills but a master or mistress of none. It's much, much harder to have the patience to master one thing really well and to do it with precision and exactitude. And to master something, one must fail at it, a lot.• Failure teaches you about will-power, persistence, self-discipline, trusting GOD and the value of hard work. One of the signs of living in fear of failure is distraction. When you allow distraction to overtake your life, you're comforted that your distractions can hide your potential to fail. Ironically, distracting yourself is a failure in its own right – a failure to take the time to keep trying, to continue toward perfecting whatever you're learning to do or seeking to become. Ultimately, failure teaches you the value of persistence and hard work. James 2:17 -So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Stay in the present. Fear of failure is a future projection of worry and a reliance on what happened in the past. If you're stuck in this kind of thinking, you're living life according to what might happen. By remaining in the present, you stay focused on the potential of now and allow your creativity, smarts, and GOD’s will to bloom. Past failures are lessons for better understandings in the present and an improved sense of living now; the future is created through your commitment to the present rather than your present being lead by your fear of tomorrow's possible losses. • Embrace fear. Failure can only keep you down if you continue to fear it. Embrace the fear and you release yourself from its control. Allowing fear to control you renders you vulnerable to being controlled. Unchecked fear can cause you to let others make decisions for you in life; while that may be a recipe for not taking responsibility when things go wrong, it can also mean you lose your sense of creativity, innovation, and even your sense of self. Help show people it's not only fine to fail but healthy to break this fear! Psalms 23

Focus on trying again. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. “Hanging in there” is the source of success for the majority of people on this planet. Overnight successes are rare; they are usually people who have been trying and failing and trying again many times over. Giving up too soon means that you'll never know whether what you're seeking to do or be was achievable this is the case for "the majority of people"!•Don't confuse lack of persistence with a goal that's not possible to achieve; most times it's the lack of persistence and not the goal that's the problem. Naturally, doing things the exact same way that lead to failure is not the answer; instead, focus on the goal and take the lessons from what didn't work to show you how you can find new, improved ways to reach your goal this time. Luke 21:19 By standing firm you will gain life.

Grow. We don't just grow for ourselves – we grow so that we can contribute well beyond ourselves. This is an important thing to remember when you're growing   through failures. Your experiences are available for others to learn from if you're willing to share them, as well as being willing to share with others how you pushed beyond failure into a more fruitful and fulfilling outcome, and even what happened when you couldn't overcome the failure. This helps everyone become more understanding and accepting of the role of failure in a successful life. Philippians 2:4 -Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others

Ditch boredom and live large. Failure is the flipside of success and without it, there could be no joy in pushing through the odds, to know what success truly feels like when achieved. At the end of the day, it's a funny world where we're all longing for everything to be simple and easy without any bumps on the road; the sooner you realize that life doesn't come with trials, the sooner you'll be happier about experiencing the bumps. And just imagine how boring life would be if you had nothing to improve or aim for! Keep in mind that the feeling of failure is the feeling of being alive. It's a sign you've given things a go, pushed boundaries, and bounced back.

 

1 John 4:4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.