I think I learned the secret to success.

Failure.

You tend to learn the secret the hard way.  This makes me think of the newest John Maxwell book coming out in October, called “Sometimes You win, Sometimes you learn”.

Psalm 12:1  says Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.

I think this is hard for us modern Americans to grasp. America was founded on men coming to America on a miserable boat of torment, sea sickness, death, and hardship.  Now it is a jet ski and paddle boats.  We don’t believe life is failing our way to the top.   Our goal now is never to fail, and never to fight.   Schools today don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings so let’s get rid of the F’s and praise them for the 30% they actually got right on the last exam!  Yes it was a true and false test so they really should have at least earned a 50% but their 30% results on their take-home open book exam shows they at least can write a T or F and that should count for something.

Failing is not an option! It is a requirement! We skin our knees and either get back on the bike and learn to ride or we get back out the training wheels of life and stay on our stationary bike.  We don’t fall, but we sure don’t travel.   The alternative is to get back up and not quit.

Proverbs 24:16 says For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.  The bigger your dreams, the harder they fall.  Yet fall they will.   When life shatters those dreams we need to pick them up, grab some duct tape, and piece by piece painstakingly rebuild.  The next time they may fall, but eventually with enough faith, and perseverance, and enough taped reinforcement, the dreams no longer shatter from even bigger tumbles.

We tend today to only embrace events and choices we know we won’t fail at and the greatest way to never fail is to never start. America was built on learning things the hard way and it is almost indoctrinated now that failure is not good.   Somehow perhaps, we need to see failing was a good thing, and that the negative feeling is not meant to never try again to avoid it, but that it is something to learn from.

To win something big you have to have a whole bunch of little losses, but really without those losses, the chance of success is minimal. In summary, see failure as a friend and not as a foe.  Don’t from failure.  And when you start running toward failure, you will soon find success is not far behind.