Open Letter To Failure

Dear loving people,

Today, I am addressing a ferocious letter to FAILURE. Join me as we put an end to whims and caprices of this persisting ill.

Pitiable FAILURE, I write to you today because I strongly think it’s about time I give you a bit of my mind. I am equally motivated by this Chinese proverb that says “If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people. You now can understand why I should free my people and myself.

In my quest to obliterate you, I stumbled on Anon’s words “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.”

Do I need to tell you again lamentable Failure that the game is over? You can see I am stepping unto the higher grounds of Success. I know you have always known that Life has its ups and downs and that everybody experiences you and success. But what is success and what is in you that make people categorize you as Failure?

As Failure, you’ve so lingered around success to the extent that people no longer need a universal definition since every person has their own definition of what success and failure mean to them. Talking about success, one can generally say that success could also be described as an achievement, whether in a particular area of life or generally in all areas of life. But, when it comes to you Failure, you leave people with much to be desired, you are such an injudicious incident in life where something goes wrong or does not go according to plan. One person may consider getting a bad grade a failure, while others might see it as a chance to try again and succeed in the second go.

Failure, thanks to your manipulations, you and success can occur in several different areas of life. A person can be successful in his or her job, he or she can lead a successful private life or be in a successful relationship, or achieve success in his or her hobbies. Possible examples of success in professional life could be getting your dream job, receiving a pay raise or being complimented by your boss. But in a time of a dramatically increasing number of burnout cases, being successful in your job could also mean not being stressed out and still achieving good results at work. Leading a successful private life could mean being in a happy relationship or having great friends. Success in hobbies could apply to sports or fishing.

Whether we are successful or trapped by you Failure is sometimes judged by others, yet sometimes we judge ourselves. The principal rule to success is mental strength. Optimism or positive thinking can help in becoming successful in any area of life. An optimistic attitude, as well as a pessimistic one, can strongly influence everything you do and therefore play a major part in your way to success. Whether we succeed or not will mostly be a result of our own work towards our goals, and should not primarily be defined by others. This is why we should concentrate on ourselves and on our goals and it will be a lot easier to achieve them and by so doing, chase Failure and its manipulations out of the system. Are you scared Failure? Hang on…

Failure, let me spoil your day by informing you that contrary to your carefully designed plans, you are rather becoming an asset to success. You head me, and I say so because I have come to realize that the sweetest victory is the one that’s most difficult. The one that requires man to reach down deep inside, to fight with everything they’ve got, to be willing to leave everything out there on the battlefield—without knowing, until that do-or-die moment, if their heroic effort will be enough.

I must tell you disgusting Failure that society doesn’t reward defeat, and you won’t find many failures documented in history books. The exceptions are those failures that become steppingstones to later success. Such is the case with Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention was the light bulb, which purportedly took him 1,000 tries before he developed a successful prototype. “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” a reporter asked. “I didn’t fail 1,000 times,” Edison responded. “The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Now! Failure, let me tell you exactly why you must be defeated. “One of the biggest secrets to success is operating inside your strength zone but outside of your comfort zone,” Heath says. Although someone might fail incredibly, they might succeed incredibly—and that’s why incredible risk and courage are requisite. Either way, they’ll learn more than ever about their strengths, talents and resolve, and they’ll strengthen their will for the next challenge.

Finally, Heath stays motivated by the thought that, “if I become complacent and don’t take risks, someone will notice what I am doing and improve upon my efforts over time, and put me out of work. You’ve got to keep finding better ways to run your life, or someone will take what you’ve accomplished, improve upon it, and be very pleased with the results. Keep moving forward or die.”

Too bad for your Failure, your doom is eminent as far as success oriented people are concerned. That is our job at Living Lectures.