4 years later

4 years ago, March 3, 2020, I started a business, without knowing that soon after the world would enter into pandemic mode. 4 years later, sometimes I feel like I am, somehow, still in 2020, back at the point where I started.

I’ve been remembering that day, as an anniversary of things that go wrong, not because of lack of preparation or planning, but as a reminder of the fragility of life and the need to be flexible.

Also, today I was reading a couple of articles about learning from failure, and thinking this would be useful to share, in case you are going through something similar.

Faith and perseverance prepare us to turn failure into success.

We can see from many stories that failure is part of the process of achieving something bigger.

In 1920 a journalist asked Thomas A. Edison, how it felt to fail 1000 times in his attempt to invent the incandescent lightbulb. He replied “I didn’t fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.” – the key point here is maybe to not take every small setback as a failure but as an incremental step.

There are many other records in the scriptures about people who failed miserably many times, but faith helped them to turn failure into preparation for success. In these cases, also the key was to trust in the long-term goal and reward, rather than in the short-term impact.

God anticipated and planned ahead for our failures.

Consider a moment, even if you don’t have a religious background, that there is a plan, and that in that plan God, the supreme creator, anticipated our failures and allocated support for us.

One of the things I like about the gospel is precisely that, failure is not final, help and compensation will be provided:

“The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss,” Elder Wirthlin said. “That which is taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in His own way. While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually be returned a hundredfold with tears of rejoicing and gratitude.”

We don’t always see our success.

A common trap we fall into is to measure success as an immediate change or increase. Often, these changes or increases take time to visualize. It may be the case we may not see, in life, the effects we dream of. However, it is always best to keep trying. If it takes 1000 steps to make a lightbulb, why stop after step 1?

Sometimes solving a problem is less important than learning from it.

Another important aspect of failure is learning, Nelson Mandela once said, “I never lose. I either win or I learn.”

We need “to learn how to fail successfully.” Failure is the teacher, learning from failing and trying again helps us to improve and to succeed.

Today even while I may feel like back at the same spot where I started, I know it is not the same, pandemic forced me to stop a few things, to change here and there, and even to move from New Zealand to Australia. Also, during all that time, I was trying out different new techniques and approaches, so today I am better prepared to start again, and I’m feeling thankful about it, not only for the new day of life but for the opportunity to start again.

I hope you may also see things differently if you ever feel like back in the same place: career, relationships, family or life in general.

The important thing is learning from the experience and having faith and perseverance to keep moving forward.

Learning from Failure Is Part of the Plan

Learn to Fail Successfully

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash.