After Failure, It’s What Happens Next That Matters
If you’re one of those people who feels damaged because you have failed, you need to learn something new. Everyone has failures, disappointments, and hurts in their life. What matters is what happens next.
How did you react when something bad happened? Were you ruined for life or did you find a way to grow and move forward? We should not let our failures define who we are. They are simply steps in our upward climb in life.
Think of the most fabulous, successful person you know. Their life likely seems perfect, but even that person has had terrible heartache, disappointments, and times when they have felt betrayed or despondent. This is simply part of the human condition.
The important thing is, what happened next? Did you find a way to learn something and move forward smarter? Did you add a skill so you wouldn’t be hurt that way again? Did you learn to be more resilient and gritty?
In our marching activity, even the most successful designers and performers have had great disappointments. If you have participated in this activity for any amount of time you know that there are a million reasons why a show might not go well. One bad decision can take everything off the cliff, or circumstances in the world beyond our control can make a season take a sudden turn. But these can be learning experiences that give us wisdom and allow us to do better the next time. We make fewer bad decisions, fewer mistakes. We learn to push through the hard times and “make it work” for now.
I ask you to consider reframing the way you see yourself and find the resilience and growth in your story. Focus on that. Take each failure and turn it into a way to move forward smarter and stronger. Your life will continue to grow and you’ll find those speed bumps on the road bother you less. Rewrite your history in your mind so that you’re the hero of every chapter. Remember the difficult times so you retain those important lessons learned, but reframe these memories as moments when you grew smarter and more resilient. Then the next time you encounter a disappointment you’ll have better tools in your tool belt to move forward.
Tim Hinton
July 18, 2022
