Hello there!
It’s been a
little over a year since I got in here to post. Busy.... hectic....etc, etc is
what I have been in the last one year managing my now one year old son, family,
work etc. After the A-Z challenge last year, to be frank I had become so
lethargic to writing; I couldn’t even imagine bringing myself to write again.
But it’s not easy to ditch something you love doing and although I often
thought of writing every month, I would procrastinate and push it to next month.
I want to thank all of you who sent me emails and texts asking me to write
again. It definitely did prompt me to start writing! I have a guest blog which
has been pending for over one year now and I will be getting it posted in the
upcoming posts.
Have you ever
experienced chronic failure in life? Are there mistakes that you keep repeating
over and over again?
- Money- We keep losing money and find ourselves often plunging in debt.
- Jobs – We can’t seem to keep a job and find ourselves changing jobs frequently.
- Relationships- We constantly keep getting into the wrong relationships.
- Emotional decisions- We constantly keep making decisions out of our emotions without rationally thinking it through.
Let me tell you what happened to me
recently.
I have mentioned
many times about the staff that works with me in my clinic. She’s been working
with me for over 8 years now. She’s good but gets a bit absent minded at times.
I often have to remind her about her work. As I recall, it was over a month ago
that I got really angry and frustrated with her because she had become very
sloppy and absent minded in her work. It began on a Thursday, where I shouted
at her for things she had forgotten. She repeated the same thing on Saturday
and Monday. I was so furious that I didn’t bother asking her why she had forgotten
but just kept yelling at her repeatedly. Yet, she wouldn’t say a word.
By Wednesday, I
was really frustrated with her. I told my wife Anu about it and she asked me
why I wasn’t considering firing her. It was hard to fire her as she was one of
the most trustworthy people I had ever met. I remember sitting in the bus that
morning on my way to work, wondering what had gone wrong with her. I began
reflecting on the past 8 years that we had worked together. That’s when it hit
me that this was not the first time I had become frustrated with her at work. I
remembered all those other times the reason she became sloppy was because
something would have been bothering her at home.
That morning as soon as she came to work, I called her to my office and said, “I don’t know if you noticed, I have been shouting at you since the past three days, I want to say that I am sorry.” She said, “It’s alright. I thought you might have been having problems at home. That’s why you were shouting.” I said, “No, things are absolutely fine at home. How are things at your home?” It was like she had been waiting for this question for the past three days! When she started talking about all the problems at home, it was like a dam breaking and waters gushing! As soon as she finished describing her problems, it was like a huge load had been lifted off her. She was back to being active at work again! It wasn’t like I did anything to help her; there wasn’t much I could do really. All she needed was someone to listen to what she was going through and that made all the difference.
We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect and so we are
prone to make them. The issue never was in making a mistake; it is when we make
the same mistakes repeatedly and don’t learn from it.
The important thing is to learn from
you failures. What caused that failure? What can I do so that I won’t fail
again? You can be sure that there will always be a next time!
Elbert Hubbard once said, "A
failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the
experience."
If this is true then the opposite of this statement is also true: "A success is a man who has blundered but is capable of cashing in on the experience." Take any successful person today and their lives will tell stories of the times they've not only failed but also how they saw and used that failure as a lesson to become successful.
So how do we
learn from the mistakes we make?
- Stop
and evaluate.
If we’re doing something that seems to be failing repeatedly then we must stop doing it. We need to take time out and evaluate. The results are going to be the same if we keep doing it the same way. We need to stop and find out the reason why we are failing. - Seek
counsel.
The best way around a repeated problem is to get outside help. Sometimes we get blinded by what seems the norm to us. It may be difficult to figure out what’s wrong. Seeking counsel is an excellent way to see things that seem invisible and find new ways of doing things that brings results. - Do
things differently.
Author and Pastor Craig Groeschel puts it this way, “If we keep doing what we’ve always done, then we will keep getting what we have always got.”
The temptation
often is to go back to doing things as in the past. Many times we become secure
with the way things were done earlier even though it yields little or no
results.
We need to courageously break away from the status quo and do things differently.
We need to courageously break away from the status quo and do things differently.
