Tag: failure

This post will be brief and about failure. We all know that no one wants to be called a failure or to be associated with failure. But failure happens to us anywhere. We fail on many items we set out to achieve. If we don’t clean the yard today as planned because it rained, we have failed. Because cleaning is construed as relatively minor task we don’t even notice we have failed.

There is always failure in some aspects of our lives.

Whilst it is painful to fail, failure validates that one had a try at something. You can’t fail your PHD if you don’t first enroll with the university. You can’t fail your driver’s license if you don’t enroll with the instructor and be subjected to an assessment by an examiner. You can’t be a failed farmer if you were never one before.

So failure validates that an action was taken with regard to what we failed doing.

Photo by Zohre Nemati on Unsplash

Failure is an equalizer; we shall all fail or have failed at something at some point in our lives. Failure knows no social class or gender. What you need to appreciate is that even the most successful and powerful can fail. With the successful you may not get to observe failure because they are successful.

I will share you a true story. It is about the great Henry Ford.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford, the most successful automobile entrepreneur of the time bought land from the Brazilian Government deep into the Amazon forest. His plan was to build one of the largest rubber plantations in the world. The plantation was to lessen his dependence on rubber coming from British controlled areas. Ford was cranking thousands of cars daily at his car assembly plants so it was in his interest to have control over supply of rubber for his automobile empire. He named the land FordLandia and immediately set to clearing the land and ploughed over 2million rubber seedlings.

But the project failed.

Why?

Parasites decimated his rubber plants; massive spraying campaign didn’t help much; the colossal $300 million invested in the project couldn’t save it from collapse. Think of it $300million in the 1920s, I don’t know how much it will be in today’s currency rates but I guess more than billion. Eventually the project folded and land was resold to the Brazilian Government possibly at a lesser value.

The story goes to show us that anyone can fail even the powerful and what I like about them is they don’t fear talking about it. To Ford failing accounted to nothing more than a lesson as he is one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs of all times and the Ford brand endures.

If you intend doing something, go do it and do it now.

In the event of failure, learn from the failure and rise to begin.

Don’t fear to fail because all of us have failed in the past or will fail in something in the future. But we will also succeed if we put our minds to work, take firm decisions followed by committed action.

Thank you for reading; I will leave you with an inspiring quote by Sabine from an article at www.mythrivehaven.com

“One thing to keep in mind, is you’re not a failure. Sometimes things don’t work out and that’s okay. That’s life. If you have no idea what’s next, that’s okay too. Take your time and figure it out” – Sabine

 

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