You Are Winning If You Don't Quit.
Before the tender age of thirty, he had failed at business twice,
suffered the death of his sweetheart, and experienced a mental
breakdown. In 1860, he was elected the sixteenth president of the
United States.
Perhaps no figure in American history has suffered as many setbacks
and failures as Abraham Lincoln. Born into poverty, he persevered
through personal tragedies, public failures, and lost elections to
become one of the most beloved and esteemed presidents in the history
of the United States of America.
Each failure spurred him to try harder, to strive for more, to refuse
to give up. Taking the lessons learned from those failures, he was
able to create a recipe for success. And succeed he did.
Rarely do we learn from our successes. Rather, it is our failures that
challenge us and teach us the most. From failure, we learn to
strategize. We learn to think outside the box, to look for new angles
and search in new directions.
In his compilation "Thoughts along the Way," author David J. Seibert
notes that the beloved late comedienne Lucille Ball was once asked to
leave drama school because it was believed she was too quiet and shy
to ever be successful. In his younger years, comedian and director
Woody Allen flunked out of a motion picture production class at New
York University. William Faulkner, who failed to graduate from high
school and was fired from an early postal job, went on to win the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1949.
How sad to think that the world may have never known the works of
these artists had they viewed such developments as a failure instead
of as a challenge. Instead of accepting that they could not succeed,
they proved that they could.
Perhaps Ms. Ball vowed to speak up, to be noticed. Maybe Mr. Allen
decided to study harder, to put in overtime. Possibly Mr. Faulkner
promised himself to write, and rewrite, and rewrite, until developing
the correct turn of phrase, the appropriate sentence structure.
Whatever messages these individuals gave themselves, one thing is
certain: they refused to quit.
When Christopher Columbus dropped anchor at what was to become known
as North America, he was perhaps experiencing the biggest failure of
his life. After all, he had set out to sail to the East Indies, and
indeed, believed himself to have arrived. Upon discovering his
mistake, he could have simply returned to the ship, berating himself
along the way, and retraced his route in hopes of finding the point at
which he drifted off course.
But how different our recitation of American history would be had he
done so! He did not meet his original goal, it's true, but he opened
himself up quite literally to the possibility of success in a
completely different direction.
Failure is simply a stepping stone, a lesson along the way. It is the
opportunity to learn and grow, to take a different route, to see
things in a new light.
Perhaps Winston Churchill, a former British Prime Minister said it
best: "Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of
enthusiasm." When we view our failures as challenges, we're able to
maintain the enthusiasm needed to rejoin the fight.
Obviously the journey of success is not a simple one. However, your
ability to remain determined, focused, resilient, and steadfast will
determine whether you will succeed in life or not. There may be what I
called ‘temporary challenges’ in your quest to achieving true success,
developing the spirit of patience and having a dire hunger for success
will lead you to the Promised Land.
If I may, the word failure is not found in the dictionary of God. In
other words, God does not believe in failure. In fact, in His Holy
Book - Mathew 19:2, it is written“But Jesus beheld them, and said unto
them, with men this is impossible; but with God all things are
possible.”
In Mark 9:23, it is again written“Jesus said unto him, if thou canst
believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”
Finally in Mark 10:27, Jesus again hinted that.., “And Jesus looking
upon them saith, with men it is impossible, but not with God: for with
God all things are possible.”
Believe in yourself and remain strong-minded, resolute, gritty,
single-minded, unwavering, firm, dogged, indomitable, untiring, and
heroic: above all be optimistic in all your endeavours. We are not
victims of failure; you are winning if you don’t quit.
CHRISTOPHER ADOBE-RAH ANALIMBEY.
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