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Mauritius: Failure, the Finger-Post to Success
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L'Express (Port Louis)
26 February 2008
Posted to the web 26 February 2008
Raj Paneken
Port Louis
"Success does not mean that one will not stumble and fall. It means that after every fall, there is a new determination to get up and keep climbing."
Each year the SC and HSC results bring in their wake their share of joy and sorrow. If they cheer the hearts of many students, they also fill others with sorrow, frustration and despair. Some are so prostrated with despair that they feel like giving up everything and accept their failure with resignation. To those who have been frustrated in their attempts, I am going to give a heartening piece of advice of how to treat their failure. So put your frustration and despair at the back of your mind and listen:
No one is infallible. Anyone is liable to fall prey to disappointment. There is no better guide to success than the lesson taught by our mistakes. However, many students and other persons react negatively to failure and accept it as final to their attempts. They refuse to treat failure as something beneficial and very often they fail to learn the lesson which crops up from it. We have just to see a baby learning to walk to grasp the fact that we are not immune from failure. The baby learns to walk by trial and error until it succeeds. So most learning is done in this way.
Anyone who claims never to have made a mistake is either deceiving himself or being deliberately dishonest. Making mistakes is universally a part of human experience. But the fact that we make mistakes is less important than our attitude towards them. We must not shrug our shoulders when making mistakes and adopt an indifferent attitude to them. If we have a sense of responsibility, we must be moved by the fact that we have made mistakes. Or else the continual habit of making mistakes will become chronic and will certainly mar our reputation in the eyes of others. Making mistakes should disturb us and lead us to some positive and remedial action.
- A Blessing in Disguise
Failure is simply a part of the learning process. It should be regarded as an opportunity to improve. It should be welcomed rather than resented because it brings the chance to learn. Failure shows us where our mistakes lie, what we have not done and what we have not prepared. It points out to us what we do not know and what we need to know about ourselves. All eminent persons have experienced failure in some way or other before reaching the pinnacle of fame. Therefore we are no exception.
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Failure should be taken for granted like bad weather. We should take a more positive and reasonable attitude towards failure and try to learn from it how to avoid the blunders which have spelt our downfall. We should regard it as an incentive to try something creative and constructive for the next attempt. Because if we let our minds dwell upon past failures, they will no doubt rob us of our confidence and sap our determination and enthusiasm to forge ahead to achieve our aims. Therefore we must banish such ideas from our minds and start afresh. For if we treat our failure constructively and positively, we shall not take long to find out that it is a blessing in disguise.
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