Coping With Failure

Coping with failure is one of the hardest things that a person has to deal with throughout his or her life. Especially for a man. Men have this little being inside of them called Egos. Women have them also, but they are not as prone to letting their egos control their actions. I am a man and I have a nice sized ego. Ok, ok! I have a BIG ego. I had to throw that in there because I know my wife is going to read this at some point in time. Believe it or not, it used to be much bigger than it is now. It’s still alive and kicking, but I have learned how to push it to the side when needed.

Throughout my life, (especially after getting married) my ego and I have been put to the test. Being that I had so many, coping with my failures was no easy task. When I was single and failed, it was very easy to choke it up as a loss and move on. After my wife chose me, I felt as tho it was a disgrace to fail and I should do nothing but succeed, if for nothing else, for her. That’s when my ego would kick in and failure started taking its toll. I began to make excuses for my failures or blame them on someone else. Little did I know that accepting those losses and learning from them would make me a better and wiser person. See right there! That’s the difference. Knowing that a failure is not really a failure, unless it’s in vain. When we learn from it and build on it, then we can say it’s just merely not meeting a desirable or intended objective. You see, I can speak on failing. I don’t think there are many people that have failed as much as I have. But once I realized that there was a lesson to be learned from those failed attempts, they became short-comings of the desired objective not failures. Don’t get me wrong, I still fell short a whole lot, even after I began learning from the mistakes. The difference is, I began to grow as an individual.

A majority of my failures were failed business attempts. When you have an idea in your head and you begin to research it and envision it, it becomes a business venture. In that case, I’ve had hundreds of them! Some of them were pretty good, but until I began learning from them they were failed attempts. And now I don’t let them get me down. I sit down, analyze the situation and figure out what it was that I should have done differently. If you have someone to emulate and get continuous advise from, them you may be able to eliminate a lot of these learning experiences. For someone like myself, that was not and is not an option, I have to learn on my own. I accept not succeeding. It is they only way that I can get closer to that desirable or intended objective. When I was in sales, the top salespeople would say “Every NO that you hear, gets you one step closer to that YES!” That right there can be applied to any aspect of Success vs. Failure.

Failing used to have me down in the dumps. I wouldn’t eat or sleep. I didn’t want to go anywhere or speak to anyone. I had it bad. Really! In 2001 I quit my 50k a year job at Office Depot to attempt to start a contracting business and for the next 4 years it was failure after failure and the entire time it seemed as if I was just wasting away. Then one day I stopped to think…What is it that I’m doing wrong? I’ve had quite a few really good business ideas but they just wouldn’t work. I dug deep within myself and realized that they all failed because I didn’t give it my all! In less then 10 minutes, I turned all of those failures into short comings just by coming to that conclusion. Then I had to take it a step further and find out why I didn’t try. Once again, I had an epiphany. I learned that I am a “Jack of all Trades, but a master of none!” The reason that I am a “Jack of all Trades” is because I don’t have the passion for any one thing. I didn’t feel deeply enough for anything to want to master it. So I sat down on my sofa one day, cleared my mind and began think about my purpose in life.

Since a child, I knew that I was supposed to reach thousands of people. I just didn’t know through what venue it would be. At one stage of my life, I thought it might be to minister to others. That idea just didn’t grab my heart the way it was supposed to when I envisioned myself doing it. I thought of anything that could help me reach others. Movies, music, writing, charity and politics. I don’t think I have the face for movies, I definitely don’t have the talent for music and a few mishaps in my past would certainly prevent me from excelling in politics. The only options left were writing and charity. Both give me a fuzzy feeling inside. Charity and writing require substantial amounts of money and/or time and while working to get someone else rich, it is close to impossible. That’s when I came across the concept of blogging. I’m going to tell the truth and admit that when I saw how much some of the top bloggers earned helped gravitate me towards blogging. But when I actually did it, I felt something that I’ve never felt before. All of a sudden I had the urge to learn all I could about writing and I visited all of the blogs that I came across. There is this strange feeling that comes over me when I sign into my blog and begin to write. Before I know it, I’ve created 3 0r 4 posts and hours have passed by. I’ve finally found it! Blogging is my passion.

The moral of the story is, I had to waste a lot of time and a whooole lot of money to figure out how to finally succeed and my success didn’t have a dollar sign on it. It wasn’t “what” I was doing that was wrong, it was how I was doing it. I tried all of those other things in pursuit of money. Don’t get em wrong, money is important. Without money I can not feed my family or pay my bills, but if I love what I do and possible help someone else in the process, the money is sure to come. My mother always told me that I could do anything that I put my mind to and I took it literally so I had to try everything that I saw interesting. She left out one minor detail…”You wont be very good at it unless your heart is in it.” That is what all of my mistakes and short comings taught me. I would do this for free. The PPC and affiliate checks help, but they don’t motivate me to do what I do.

Failure can take a lot out of a person and distract you from concentrating on what’s important. That’s why coping with failure is a must, not an option.

Any questions or comments can be post to the blog or emailed to me at
info@seansview.com

June 18th, 2007