I just failed! But I failed forward!!
Hi Fam! It’s the weekend again. Any way, it’s more like an extended weekend because of the National Democracy Day holiday. If you know I like weekends then be assured I like public holidays even more. Most times, I set my mind on achieving specific personal tasks during these holidays. So, yesterday was a public holiday (June 12th) Democracy Day but I really didn’t have a holiday what I had was work- from -home kinda day because I had a webinar to prepare. I was responsible for the smooth flow of the webinar so I had to get things ready.
Sadly, I was not prepared for the big turn of event. I tried to deploy a single method of getting my tasks done because I didn’t have enough time to deal with it if I had taken the usual route of deployment of two methods. The method I deployed, yielded 0 (zero) result! Mehhhnnn! I was bitterly disappointed in myself. To think I put extra effort in getting things done using another method and it resulted to something you can call ‘Colossal failure’.
Afterwards, my boss called me, expressed her displeasure about the outcome of events and rebuked me accordingly because we both realized that the method I deployed failed and its failure was obvious because I didn’t have a back-up plan. If I had engaged the two methods that I used for previous tasks I would have had a back-up plan and would have been saved. I owned up to my mistake, accepted that whatever single method I deployed failed and I apologized.
So why didn’t I use the two methods that had worked for me earlier? I simply thought the new method will save a bit of time and help me to get my tasks done quicker and effective. Guess you are asking why I am sharing this story with you? See ehnn, I learnt significantly through this failed task, I simply FAILED FORWARD.
After the episode of personal and team rebuke(this is story for another day), I did a mental rewind of what exactly went wrong with the failed method, I shared my task-execution process with my family and as were discussing, we identified the technical and character flaws involved in the process taken to get the tasks done. Those flaws led to the deployment of the method which caused failure.
The first thing I learnt was to be prepared for big things. Truth be told, though I knew what to do to handle the big things but I was really not prepared for it so I couldn’t make some decisions or changes when I was hit with big things. Two, through the failure of the single method, I got to know more about the pros and cons of the technology of the single method I deployed. Three, this failure helped me to realise which method has been working for me amongst the two methods I have been using earlier.
Often times, I find it difficult to forgive myself in situations like this because failure episodes have a way of replaying in my head. Since yesterday, I almost lost motivation to do the tasks that I have planned for the public holiday and the weekend. I didn’t even feel like writing this blog post but I had to muster some bits of courage to pick up my laptop and get my fine fingers on the keyboard.
After this writing, I do hope I will feel better and really move on from this memory of failure, knowing I had just FAILED FORWARD. I hope that someone, somewhere too will be encouraged and not give up to an episode of failure because failure is part of the process of success. Like a friend of mine will say ‘Trust the process’, this includes the failure part of the process too. So, let’s pick ourselves up from whatever turn of failure knowing we have just FAILED FORWARD and He always got you no matter what.
Je t’aime mon ami
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