Well we have all seen the movie Scrooge or maybe the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past so we get the imagery behind things that haunt us. How do we deal with failures? It could be divorce, a business partner who wronged you or loss of a job or bad job evaluation.
Evaluate, don’t be like Scrooge who carries his past into his present only to ruin his entire future and wind up alone because of a bitter spirit he didn’t even realize controlled his life. Not to let failures enter our spirit. That is the key. Learn from it, don’t repeat it. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t ruminate on it over and over. Take inventory, take stock, make notes, but get past it quickly.
Failure or discouragement can drag down the soul of a man. Ever hear of a wounded spirit? Once our spirit is wounded its crushed or not as full of life as it could be. So when dealing with failures, let them go. Some simple words: Don’t let them drag down your soul. Become a new man like Ebeneizer Scrooge who reinvented his soul on Christmas morning when he realized he had the power to be different even after a lifetime of carrying the chains of the past!! Move forward, move on and move into the lives of others in a powerful way!
Marianne loves to help people reach their goals: through direction, accountability, and years of experiencing what works and what doesn't.
"Her drive and enthusiasm shows how passionate she is about coaching and in empowering and helping others move forward." -- Carole Cowperthwaite O'Hagen, Executive Coach and Trainer
What does “take inventory, make notes, get past it quickly” mean.
I love the article and agree with it in principle, but am not sure I ever really get over failure and hurts. I forgive, I try my best next time, but a chunk of my soul has still been ripped out. Maybe you could expound on this for me at some point.
Keep up the good work,
Rob
Rob,
Great question!! To take inventory I mean for example, when a department store spends days and days going over every single item and its cost and worth because they can’t afford to lose a dollar here or 30 cents there. Its like that with us when we fail, we can’t afford to miss something that was our fault, our character, our part. Otherwise we have a huge blind spot that will lead us to repeat the same horrible mistakes over and over and over again like in the movie Groundhog Day. So we have to take stock of our failures by evaluating what was our part, what is our character flaw. For example, people might make rude comments to me and I might react. Well they were rude, right. But perhaps I am overly sensitive and don’t realize it. So I can work on not letting people’s comments get to me. I can even get to the point where I welcome them and even laugh at rude people instead of internalizing it. To get past it quickly I mean some people can spend a lifetime beating themselves up over a failure. This leads nowhere. It is better to say I did this wrong and I will improve in this way and I am moving forward with my life! Hope this helps!
The Author Marianne