失败乃成功之母

I finally know what it means by the chinese saying.

In the past, I often wondered what it means by failure is the mother of all success. Once people fail, they will never succeed, isnt it? Don't fail will guarantee success.

Then I revised my opinion on this recently. For everything to start, one has to fail. The failure is because of things unexpected, not things that is not anticipated. It is taking calculated risks.

Why?

If one do not fail, one does not know exactly what one wants in specific.

Once they fail, they have a clear picture as to how they want things to be done so they get a sense of their liking in this way. They have established clearly what they truly wanted and that is the most important thing because most of the time, people do not know what they truly want.

Of course, once one learns from the failure, the next thing is do not trip over the same thing again.
In this way, don't fail again will guarantee success.

If one fails again, then the learnings gleamed before must have missing pieces which is why people trip over the same thing again. That person will have to treat the issue with caution and examine the issue with a fine toothed comb again to check for loopholes so that the learnings are completed.

As you can see, this is a cycle.

With this cycle, one has to be prepared mentally.

What does it mean?

One has to learn to let go of oneself and treat themselves kindly.
Nevermind that it is a big boo boo in front of others.
Nevermind that your learning curve is slower than the others.

The most important thing is one learn the required lessons. The danger of losing face in front of others because one is slow is not so important in the long run to one's growth. Yes, the controversy over the fact that one is slower will go on but temporarily. Controversy will be replaced by another controversy.

You can choose to make the controversy go away.

The controversy will die down once one learnt the lesson and do it better than before.
It is a big step for oneself especially those who cannot tolerate failure. We are so attuned and wired through the years of schooling that we CANNOT fail and MUST'NT fail. The consequences would be DISASTEROUS.

Yes, the consequences would be one need to detour longer to get to the same destination.
But does that diminish the importance of the destination?
NO.

It just take the person longer time to reach, that's all.

BUT, does the person learn other things when they detour?
Yeah, they learn a lot more by the different route they have taken from the rest of the people. See more variety of flowers along the way.

The next important thing to tell oneself besides allowing / consenting oneself to make mistakes, is self-forgiving.
This is a very very crucial concept and an important agreement with oneself, even more important than to allow oneself to make mistakes. Without this, the consenting part on making mistakes would not even come alive.
This is in fact, the hardest part. In an educational system where we are innoculated to feel guilty over failures, feel small because we never meet the "normal" standards, feel inferior that we are much lower than a bunch of people who perform well in exams and therefore, considered smarter, etc, often we find ourselves enlarging our failures to 100times so much so that it become the focus of the day and even a lifetime. There is nothing more important and ominious than the failure. There is practically no virtue left in the person judging from the failure done.
But think of it this way, the universe still moves on. The sun would not not set because of your failure. In the whole wide world, the mistake made is so insignificant. Yes, it is significant in one's life at the moment because one allows it to be the HIGHLIGHT of the day. But it will pass and will be replaced by another person's mistakes or success.
Let's not browbeat oneself to conform to the standards of everyone.
Take a deep breathe and hold for 5 sec.
Clear your mind of everything. The shame, the bruising ego, the bleak outlook of life due to the mistake, the accusing looks given by family and friends,etc...It seems that the whole load of the world is on your shoulders.
Let it GO.
If it is not possible, go for a walk, run if you must, cry if you want, kick something in anger, dump something around, VENT it OUT.
Let the MIND go BLANK.
After that, visualise the scenario again from the next party on the scene.
Take a detached view.
If there some learnings gain?Block the pain if you have to.
If there are learnings, is it positive?
Brainstorm a little.
What if there are negative learnings?
Then think again, what is the positive intention or feedback to the person?
Write it down and store them. You will need it later in your life.
You can review the letter again to see if you have learnt your letter after the encounter.

It works for me. I am learning to forgive myself more easily. It should be easier every time I forgive myself.
I want a healthier and more positive and more adventurous me.
So what if I make mistakes?
I have to reprogramme myself to say MISTAKES = LEARNINGS. It is not as if I never plan. I just did not see the unexpected.
I am definitely DOING BETTER the next time.