WHY WE FAIL IN LIFE By Sipho Mlambo

WHY WE FAIL IN LIFE

Failure is something we experience in our everyday life, but instead of the question being asked "why we fail" people tend to hide behind the term that says we are humans, and human beings make mistakes, and we make mistakes so that we can learn from them. But the ultimate question we have to ask ourselves is WHY did we do that, why did we fail, why did we make that mistake? I think the reason why we don't want to accept the reasons to why we fail is simply because we don't want to accept the fact that we failed ourselves.

The reason why some people fail in life is because we lack something in our lives, some people lack information and some lack a person to talk to, that's the reason why they fail in life. If we all had what made us whole we all would be where we dreamed to be. But what I know and understand is that we fail because we don't know who we are, the capabilities we possess and the power that we carry, if someone lacked something in life they will make sure that they work hard in order to fill it up, for example I grew up without money but I had to strive and work hard so that I can one day have what I lacked. People tend to take drugs or alcohol in order to forget about their problems, but they don't notice that success is a life long solution to the problems you have, and when I talk about success I'm not talking about all the money, the cars and the mansions you wish to have, but I talk about success that makes you whole again that fills a gap in your life. Some of us don't have parents to take care of us, some of us don't have someone to guide us through life, we often face sorrow and grief, but that's not to blame for our failures, as a person you have to be what you lack, if you don't have a father/mother, strive to be a better man/woman than them, strive to be a father/mother to yourself and an even better one compared to yours, strive to be a father/mother to the fatherless be what makes you happy and what makes other people happy and that's the best success you can ever have.

We fail in life because we allow what we lack to bring us down, to blind us from seeing our potential and ability, we allow our circumstances to define who we are, and we fail because we didn't know the truth, that WE ARE POSSIBLE. Each one of us has the ability to change their problem to become a solution, we have the ability to transform our lives from bad to good, only if we can realize the potential we have, we carry the power to bring our dreams to reality, remember that success is not for dreamers but for people who make their dreams come true, you can have a brilliant idea, a brilliant dream or goal, but it remains what it is because you have not made it into reality. A man once said that everyone is gifted but most people never open their packages. You might be the world’s best author, but how will you know that if you haven't wrote something? You might be the world’s best musician but how will you know if you have not sang a song? If you have a dream or a goal you want to achieve I encourage you now to take the first step, if you still talking about your dream, if you still talking about what you want to become I say to you shut up! And start working hard to achieve your dreams for actions speak louder than words, therefore your work will show that you are what you are because of what you did

The ultimate key to happiness is knowing that you have happiness within you, because if you don't know that you have happiness within you, you will do anything to be happy and yet never find that happiness, so the ultimate key to a happy and fulfilled life is knowing who you are and what you can achieve. It's time we stop talking about what we want or where we want to go, it's time we prepare our feet for the journey, the journey of success is not that long but it has barriers that can make a person to give up on their goals, Success is already in you, but it takes knowledge to realize that, if you don't have that knowledge it becomes a barrier or an obstacle that prevents you from reaching your goal. You can reach your goals only if you know that you have goals to reach and how to reach them.

"One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat."

If we want to be happy and we want to make sure that we don’t fail in our lives, we must start to understand that the problems we are facing are not here to stay but have come to pass, we must know and understand that problems strengthen me not failures, I learn from the trials and tribulations i have to face in order for me to be strong, I'm not made strong by failure.

The moment we start to defeat the problems we have, that’s when we defeat failure, if you are unable to defeat the problem you have, it means failure is knocking at the door and you are about to open for it. We must understand for a fact that we are greater than the troubles/ problems we face, I believe that God cannot give you a problem you cannot overcome because he knows that you have greatness within you, and you are able to overcome all the problems you face.  Well, since growing up from a young age I've always believed that problems are here to test you, to see if you are ready for success, so if you fail the test you are not worthy to have success in your life, right now I urge you to stand erect and fight for who you are and for what you will be.

People often fail in life because they couldn’t deal with the little problems around them, how can you have a dream to become a president and hope to change the country or the world if you can't even change the people around you? If you can’t even change your community? The small things we despise in life, the small things we fail to overcome or we fail to change in life are sure to be the major contributors of our success, if you fail to handle small amounts of money, how are you to handle larger amounts, how can you handle millions if you failed to handle thousands, let us start to value the little things we have in life and start to build our dreams based on such. I remember when we used to go to school, we would have a homework or we would be preparing for exams, I'd say to myself “I am going to read this book” and I even set a schedule of times and dates to read, but I only found out that I wasn’t doing what I said I would do, and if you fail to do what you said you will do, Success starts to doubt of whether you worthy to have him or not. I learnt the hard way that Success is for people who say I will read and finish this book and they do it! Success is for people who say I will wake up in the morning and they wake up! Success is for people who can wake up in the morning and say NO MATTER HOW BAD IT IS OR HOW BAD IT GETS…I'M GOING TO MAKE IT!!!, Success is not for people who only talk but it’s for people who can act on their words, Lastly success is not for dreamers but for dream-doers.

These days we have people who spend most of their time talking about what they want to do, and little do they know that the more they talk, the lesser the work that is done, and the best way to finish a lot of work fast is by having less talk. We sometimes talk too much and we don’t realize that when we talk we are unable to see or to test if the dream is true or not, if you spend time talking about your business idea, you are unable to see if it works or not since it’s just an idea but once you sit down and get your hands dirty building it, you will talk about it with confidence and you will have something to show for it. What I'm saying is that we have to start preparing for our future because if we spend time talking about the future, we won’t get time to prepare for it.

"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail."

If we plan, we prepare for our future we sure won’t fail but if we don’t prepare for it we are preparing to fail. People often believe that failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligent. But don’t you ask yourself a question that what if I didn’t fail? Where would I be now? What would I have achieved now? Some believe that failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved, but I say to you that failure just makes you realize that you are left behind and allows you to activate the power in you in order to catch up with those ahead of you, in order to  be more successful. But it also depends on how much a person know themselves in order to be able to activate the power in them, because some people fail and fail but never succeed so it means for them failure is not the foundation of success.

To prove this to you I make an example of learners that go to school. We attend the same grade, we are taught by the same teacher and we are in the same class, at the end of the year when we get our results one passes and the other fails, now the one who passed is one grade ahead of the one who failed and no matter how hard the one who failed might work, it will not take him/her to the same class as the one ahead of him.

So what I’m simply saying is let us believe in ourselves and stop believing that whenever we fail it’s the foundation of success. You are always behind by one step every time you fail, and yes failure might open your eyes to see and you might succeed so don’t think it’s because you failed that now you succeed. Failure comes in different ways to different people, to one it comes as a lesson which will turn into a blessing and to the other it becomes a nightmare that they’d never wake up from.

Failure is not the foundation of success, and it will never be, but knowing yourself and understanding your capabilities and knowing that you can achieve more in life is the foundation of success. Let us refuse to fail but choose to open our eyes and see the power that is within us and the ability that God has given to us.

“Failure is an event not a person”, said Zig Ziglar.

These days’ people treat failure as if it’s a person, some people are even married to failure, and some even today continue to invite failure into their lives as if it’s a person looking for a friend. You must take note that failure is an event not a person, failure is an event that opens your eyes to realize the inner you, to see yourself in a better way, but let us not forget that events are not made every single day so this means you can’t expect to fail every single day, failure comes and goes. But forget not the reason as to why it came in the first place, to teach YOU. It’s like when a person is caught in a scene of an accident, the person survives the accident and after that he/she starts to view life in another way he/she starts to value the things that matters to him, so it took an accident (a flash of death to flash in his eyes in order to open his eyes to value and cherish the people around him/her, so is with failure, you can refuse to fail and choose to know and understand yourself. If the person knew himself and knew that I have to be kind to those who support me and love me, he/she wouldn’t had been in a accident in the first place. So let us stop taking failure as if it’s a person, we are the human beings and forget not us that we are greater and above failure, we have wisdom that causes failure to ask itself a question that says “AM I MAKING THESE PEOPLE FAIL OR THEY ARE MAKING ME FAIL?”, Let us tap into our greatness and understand the power we possess.

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing from”

A mistake should be a correction to get you back on track when you’ve failed, but if you commit a mistake and there’s no correction you are left unchanged, you remain as you were yesterday and even worse today because you failed what you’ve done.

Many people rely on corrections to shape their lives, it’s a good thing to find your way back when you’ve failed and turned astray, but it’s not a good thing when one keeps on being tripped by the same stone every day, open your eyes and see what lays before you. I say you cannot fall into the same hole more than once, unless if you were a blind man, you cannot stay in the same hole without finding a way out.

Mistakes are meant to open our eyes, not because we were blind, but because we were made blind. Making a mistake does not mean you are stupid, but it means you ignoring your wisdom. Mistakes and failure are like the medication you take when you sick, but this sickness is not common, it’s a sickness of ignorance that one suffers from when they value something/someone more than their worthy. When a person build a house, and it falls, the following days he builds it up again, it falls again, he builds it again, he might not build the same house as the previous one, he might build different houses but the fact is he did not just sit down and relax, he stood up and build the house, he corrected the error.

Let us not allow our lives to fall and we do nothing about that, whenever we fall let us rise even better than before, when people think that it is done of you, let us raise the standards and rise even stronger and better than we were yesterday.

Let us not repeat the same mistakes everyday but rather learn from a mistake, even though we shouldn’t even commit a mistake. But it is said that we are human beings and we commit mistakes.

“To stumble twice against the same stone is a proverbial disgrace”

Failing once is understandable, failing twice kills ones confidence. Failing thrice or more kills ones dignity, integrity and self-esteem. But it takes determination, dedication, passion and hard work for one to stand on their feet again.

Failing must be a car wash for your car, not the petrol of your car. Let failure be a something that rectifies you not something that you cannot live without.

“But man is not made for defeat, ‘he said. ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

The problems were face in life, the obstacles we go through, the storms we face are there to destroy us but not to defeat us. The storms we face are for us to ride them and become the storm riders, knowing that no matter how hard the situation may be, we ride the storms.

The things we face, the things that cause us to fail in life, the things that Cause us to make mistakes in life are there to strengthen us so that we can be able to stand even more.

Nothing can defeat a man, but something can destroy a man. And as I’ve seen destroying a man does not need any physical damage but the internal one. When a man sees it not fit to live, he has been destroyed spiritually but not defeat because once he comes back to his senses he will be able to rise again.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. I’ve seen and realizes that whenever a person is close to achieving something, the storms raise the standards and become hurricanes and tornados, simply to put fear in you not to carry on. Whenever you close to revealing your talent or achieving a goal, something always comes up to make you procrastinate your dreams and goals.

We must learn to become patient and; learn to become passionate with/on something. When you do something, put your heart to it, lest it leads to failure and you making mistakes.  Do what you love and give it your all!!!!

“Success comes to those who become success conscious. Failure coms to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure conscious”

Before failure manifests it starts in the mind, when a person meditates about failure for a long time, they end up failing because that’s what they were expecting. But once you become success conscious, you don’t have failure in your mind, the only thing you think about is success and only success. Once you become positive with yourself and believe that you will always make it in life, failure will never be perceived in mind nor will it manifest.

 The reason why we always fail and make mistakes is because we allow the negative to dominate the positive, we allow darkness to illuminate the light. But we forget that darkness can never dominate the light. Once you have a positive mindset you become the light and you dominate failure. Let us be success conscious not failure conscious.

 People are often afraid of failure because they think it’s a wall standing before their success, preventing them from going to the other side, but let me tell you something failure is there because you have built that wall with the thoughts of your mind, the negative thoughts in your head that make you believe that you will never make it in life, But hey, you will make it only if you believe in yourself and the ability you have.

“Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; it is also the success of others”.

To some people, failure is a punishment of their ignorance and the disbelief they have for themselves. But some failure becomes a stepping stone to success, to each and every one of us failure comes in different ways, there’s the kind of failure that comes because of lack of knowledge and there’s failure that comes because of knowledge ignorance.

For example, a teenage girl knows that when I have sex without using protection I’ll be pregnant, but they choose to ignore that knowledge and satisfy their desire thus leading to knowledge ignorance failure, and there’s the kind that manifests because of lack of knowledge, for example an entrepreneur starts a business but because they don’t have enough skills or training to run a certain business, then the business fails, that failure is not preserved because the entrepreneur ignored knowledge but rather the entrepreneur lacked knowledge.

What I see these days, is that because confuse these kinds of failure, failure because of ignorance of knowledge does not lead to success but rather makes you to now pay attention to the knowledge no longer to ignore such.

But failure manifested because of lack of knowledge leads to success, it becomes a stepping stone to success because now it allows you to know what you didn’t know, you receive what you lacked. We must understand and take heed to the failure we experience thus we can say that failure leads to success.

“Success is never final, failure is never fatal. Its courage that counts”

“Ones only rival is one’s own potentialities. Ones only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king