Failure, a roll of the dice!

As we enter into the final week of 2017, I have to thank you for your continued support, I had not hoped to cross 7K on readership, so soon, but we did, 7056 to be precise ( till 24th Dec 3:45 PM). It has been a great year for me. Early this month, I sent out emails to randomly selected returning readers/commenters to ask them if there is a specific topic on which they’d like to hear from me. I received 347 responses, studied them to ascertain that roughly 86% people hinted at hearing on “failure”!

I thought a great deal about it .. re-lived most of those moments when I encountered failures and what transpired from each of those events and how life kept changing, sometimes irreversibly. I also got drawn into thinking how would life have been without those moments of failure, for a brief while that thought felt really nice .. and I did get seduced into devoting more to a failure free life but as I scratched the surface a little, I realised that my thinking had quietly shifted from being realistic to wishful, a few hours later, the idea almost appeared unreal to me and then I jogged back to my failures again to gather all that I had learnt from my own falls.

A day and a half with these thought & I got fairly certain, that my life wouldn’t have been what it is today ( could be better, and I’m working towards it) had I not failed. I tried looking at it a little more dispassionately, separating emotions from the core issue or the event. Most of my failures started to make perfect sense, then.

Come to think of it .. life is only a tad better than roll of dices more so because one thing leads to another. If decisions operated in isolation, failure & success wouldn’t have mattered as much, but because life is a series of events one coming after another in a logical and progressive sequence - each event is indeed imp. 

Let’s accept this - Shit happens! 

Don’t you agree? As much as we would despise failing; we all do once in a while, ins’t it? 

Everything counts, from you letting the snooze button win most mornings to you not choosing right things to eat or loosing to your own lazy self and thus missing on your exercise routine. Even in areas which are more formal in nature, lets say an investment tanking or an assignment flopping big time - We’re in a way a sum total of these!

Let’s open it up a little. Failure often times is considered bad, expect for that fact that is not always so. Some failures actually propel us to a progressive future, enables us to make amends and move on with our life just fine and even those which do not really make us into something better at least leave us with a better understanding of who we actually are. 

Both successes and failures start at a decision .. irrespective of the size, impact or even the context, a decision is always the starting point.

I like to think of life as a puzzle and each decision as a block in that massive build up that spreads itself across a stretch as long as a lifetime.The choices that you make lead you in a certain direction, remember nothing is absolute- your wrong could be someone else’s right, our lives are interconnected more interestingly then it may  appears to us. We keep moving forward each day a little irrespective of us failing or succeeding - because that puzzle called life, knows one thing and that is how it would like itself to get concluded. While it may seem like you hold the console but for the most part .. you actually get played.

No one I know has it figured out completely .. nor do I have it completely within my grasp but what I do know is that no one ever walked this earth without failing more than a couple of times, at things, they today are successful at. Failure really is the GPS to success, in ways more than one for those who really desire to succeed. 

Life will never be free of failures .. there will always be victories and losses. All of us will have to not only put up a fight for a seat at the table better yet try work harder to get to the seat at the head of the table. So long as there is life .. there will be struggle and so long as you struggle .. possibilities of meeting failures will be there.

So what you really can and should do is to think of an approach towards dealing with failure. The questions is to work towards a strategy to make these stumbles rare and too far and few in between by being meticulous, sincere, alert and above all careful. 

I wish for you to succeed but if life catches on .. you could make use of these three tips.

1. Quitting too early is uncool: Quitting is easy but not fun. In more than half of the occasions where I have chosen to be persistent, I have succeeded. Even in the face of most strongest opposition and most unfavourable of the circumstances you sometime have to just hang in there. You can’t finish first without being in the ring for longer!
2. Regard for Rejection: We give in, because we face rejection, sometimes even from people who we trust & look up to. Rejections can’t be the reason to give up on anything, what you need to pick up from it is the clues to change, to get better. You need to work your way thru rejections. Our world is not always very warm but it does get kinder to those who handle rejection gracefully. Validation is not as valuable as you may think. It is ok for some to not understand you or your plan as well as you do. Offer a nice smile and move on.
3. Future is not a mere repetition of past. - Everybody commits error, the important thing is to learn from them. Because you’ve failed in the past .. you shouldn’t try in the future is the most unwise advise that you’d ever get. If you care for it .. go for it! Let not failures of past limit your ability to carve a future full of success. You can change the pattern.. if you really want to.

If you ask me .. it is a constant struggle between the below two.

1) Desire to succeed

2) Fear of failure

There will be times when these two mingle into each other and become inseparable, you have to remember - nothing defines you better than your will. Law of averages applies to everything and it will caste its spell on you too, you will stumble, you will fall, you will get knocked down sometimes in the face and hard - it is all part of the procedure.

Fear and failure is part of life, the trick is to recognise it as a fact ; you’ve to give strength to your desire to succeed and in that long journey take a few failures here and there with a grain of salt. Nothing great has ever been achieved overnight. If you wish to succeed be ready to be in the middle and fight it till you knock your opponents down.

You real opponent is “failure” - deal with it. 

Gather yourself & stand again - for it is worth it.

With that I end this.. wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy new year 2018.

Change of guard ~ a journey from familiar to unknown!

  

17^th of January, wrapped in an organizational announcement, brought us a piece of information , I don’t call it a news for the increasing anticipation in the week preceding had got many of us to deploy most of our resources to find out –what change can we expect, pronouncement stamped a few assumption as correct and a few otherwise – I don’t take any pride in claiming that my information sources had revealed to me exactly what made those tiny little boxes of organizational chart ( my resources are a blend of informed guess and suitable mix of permutation an combination ).

Well, but despite the faithfulness, we all awaited the news from the horse’ mouth to believe it for real - it arrived with a promise of making what seemed a “change” on the 17^th as a “way of life” soon after. My astrologer friend has always been telling me that the “rahu and Ketu” at the degrees that they are operating in my natal chart  - sudden and surprising changes should reside at the very heart of series of events which will come together to make this year(#2012) for me – and trust me with this change I do believe the astrological prediction were absolute! – the change was swift and startling – whether pleasantly or not should be left for the upcoming to decide, for now I see this change as a “change” – nothing less , nothing more.

The change was now open, all guesses had been put to rest... which gave birth to a new discussion across the team aimed at understanding what could have been the probable causes to the effect of this change – I did not make myself a party of any such deliberation for I was still trying to get in peace with the new change. Why people were finding it difficult can we summarised, when you read the below compliments, I had received from our HOD, on my performance which by all standards is nothing sort of brilliant, for people who have expressed their view on it ( I don’t believe it to be a testimony of brilliance – it serves me a certificate of good work, though)

“Excellent job - Call Centre team – Haryana and HP. Nationally # 1 . AGAIN J 9^th Month in a row ! “

I resumed the responsibility of this vertical in the month of Feb 2011, since then, month after month – we kept raising the bar, substantially exceeding the expectation, till this January , when I handed over this masterpiece to a very good friend – in that sense I am relieved and happy too!

They say, running fast is important , climbing steepest range is vital – but it is indeed lonely and uninteresting there  - for the first few months when we were nationally number one - it felt special –  (9)months after too it feels the same - what has changed in nine months? -  “desire to get to number 1” got replaced by the yearning “to consolidate the position there to not let the performance slip to even the number 2 spot” – we all toiled hard & honest, lord kept kind and we kept hitting the bull’s eye month on month – but what had certainly scaled down somewhere within me was the “eagerness” , I truly now wanted to change my position from the one executing it with my own hand , to one mentoring it from distance.

For last one week, I’m working on the new block in the organisation chart which has my seven letter name within its boundary  “Provisioning(FTA) & quality” verticals of Punjab, Haryana & HP telecom circles – and I’m yet again in the close company of my favourite feelings – I like being unfamiliar, unsure, unknown & Insecure – for it keeps me attached with the subject, as I try to learn it, beyond familiarity could ever have, it is like knowing that someone is great and trying to be friends with him/her without getting to face off physically. What best describes how I feel in the new responsibility is that , when we start for a tourist destination , we surly know what are the monuments to visit but we seldom know how are the streets going to be, what resemblance would small roadside shops have with the ones we have grown up among, and it is perhaps the unknown element that exhilarates me more than the obvious, to start on this journey afresh and enjoy the voyage along.

The new responsibility that I have been entrusted upon has shaken me for good, got my eyes opened wide, given me the view of a new target, a new desire and I’m all up for it – wish me luck!

Twitter : @LKstates: Harmony with present is best arrived at when we see 'change' as 'change' & let course of time prove it good or otherwise! Happy weekend :)