A Failure Is Never A Failure

Pulling up to our new home and seeing the ‘For Sale’ sign on the lawn, I felt like the biggest failure in life. We’d only lived there about a year, it was the best home we’d ever had, and now we had to sell it. – Not by choice though. If it wasn’t sold, the bank was going to repossess it. 

“I love this house.”

I turned around and looked at my son, Matthew who’d stayed in the car unnoticed to me after my wife and daughter had gotten out.  If there were four words that cut me to the bone it was those. They also couldn’t have been timed at a worse moment. Right then, it felt like life had taken a blade and driven it deep inside me. I didn’t know how I was going to have to explain to him that we’d be moving soon to who knows where?

Ever have a moment like that? You feel like the biggest failure to ever have walked the planet. Sometimes we can keep those failures to ourselves, but sometimes like my, ‘For Sale’ sign, it’s something that the whole world can see and talk about. 

Looking back at that time, from where I am now, I can see that it was the best thing to happen to me. We’d bought a house that was too remote and my wife couldn’t drive, so she was stuck there until I got home from work. We bought the house in Northern Ireland and I worked in Southern Ireland. – Meaning, my wages had to be converted into sterling and depending on the exchange rate, some months it worked for us and some months it worked against us.  Plus, moving into a tight-knit community it felt like we’d never be accepted as a locals. 

Sometimes, when you’re going through a failure it can seem like you’re heading down the plughole. But given space and time, you’ll see that painful and all as it is, there is something you can take from it.  That book idea wasn’t right for the marketplace. Podcasting wasn’t for you. That blog you worked on was too generic to stand out. The course you created wasn’t a topic people wanted help with.  Now equipped with that information your second attempt will be better.  You’ve worked out what didn’t work, now it’s time to try something that could work.  

It’s said that a rocket fails its way to the moon.  Each time it veers off course, it’s brought back to a new path until it veers off again.  And your failure is no different. You’ve just worked out something that didn’t get you to where you wanted to go to, and now it’s time to try out another course correction. Failure is when you stop there and don’t get back on the horse. It’s when you shut off the engines of your dream and leave it there floating in space until gravity pulls it back to Earth. 

As I’m writing this piece, the house I live in is bigger, in a better location, and somewhere I never thought I’d see myself living.  And all because the rug was pulled out from under me. Life knew that the last house wasn’t right for me and that I was clinging to something that was going to bring me down with it. 

Failure can be like that sometimes. We feel that it should have worked. That, if we only worked harder on it. Prayed enough, Begged enough. Threw as much as we could against the wall that something would eventually stick. But sometimes we need to be shown that we’re throwing dirt in the wrong direction and against the wrong wall. Sometimes we need to have someone put their hand on our shoulder and tell us that it’s not going to work.  And sometimes our biggest struggle with failure is accepting that. That this thing just wasn’t right for us. And that there’s a better wall five feet to the right us, where everything will stick. But to stop what we’re doing, and turn that way is something we stubbornly refuse to do. – ‘This is the way it’s going to work and I’m going to make it work,’ we tell ourselves, trying to cram that square peg into that round hole. 

Failures can be tough. They can be heartbreaking. And sometimes we can’t see anything other than the failure we’re staring at.  But given time, space, and just lifting our heads up and looking around, we find that it’s just part of the journey to getting to where we wanted to go to.  We veered off course. We drove up a cul de sac. And all it takes is a change of direction. Reversing back to where we got lost to find the next course to take. 

And when we do, we find that there’s a wiser person standing on that spot. Because although you’ve had a failure, you’ve learned something from it, you’ve now got knowledge and experience that you can carry into your next attempt.  And each time we do, we grow, we develop and it’s a better person taking better actions and making better decisions.  Failure is the opposite of success and you can’t have one without the other. And wouldn’t life be boring if it worked out perfectly every single time? – Of course, it would. 

Just remember, just because you had a failure, that doesn’t make you… a failure.  – And failures are never final.  Keep going. 

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