"Failure" Baggage You Must Not Take Into the Future

March 13, 2018

WHAT YOU HAVE TO FIX BEFORE STARTING OVER We said last week that failure is more common than success, but that if dealt with effectively, failure can become a valued friend. We saw that the Bible tells us:

We will all fail (James 3:2)
We can recover from failure (Proverbs 24:16)
God will help us (Psalm 145:14)
We can learn from our failures (Psalm 119:77)

We saw that wisdom tells us:

Acknowledge your failure
Take full responsibility
Mourn the failure
Learn from the experience
Change your behavior
Enter whole-heartedly into the next project

This week, as we envision tackling the next project, having learned from our failures, there are two additional steps we must take:

Overcome internal weaknesses that contributed to our failure.
Overcome external weaknesses that contributed to our failure.

Internal Weaknesses In his book Failing Forward, John Maxwell gives 7 ways people get in their own way

Poor people skills. By far, the greatest obstacle to success is poor people skills. We don't have to be smooth and charming, but people do have to feel that we treat them with dignity and respect.
A negative attitude. Some look at life and see lemons. Others see lemonade. Your attitude can make or break you.
Lack of focus. The old sports adage is, you have to keep your eye on the ball. That's true in sports, and is true in anything we do. We have to pay close attention to what we want to accomplish.
Weak commitment. Halfhearted measures yield halfhearted results.
Unwillingness to change. If we keep doing what we're doing, we'll keep getting what we're getting. If we want to get something different, we need to do something different. An unwillingness to change can be a significant barrier to success.
Relying on talent alone. Talent is fixed, and will only take us so far. We must add to talent a strong work ethic, creativity, and perseverance.
Having no clear goals. Someone said, "if you don't know where you're going, you'll get there every time." If we have a clear sense of purpose, if we know what it is that we want to accomplish, we have a much greater chance of achieving it.

So these are internal weaknesses that may have contributed to past failure, and which need to be addressed as we enter, wholeheartedly, into our next project. External Weaknesses Then, there are the external weaknesses that may need to be addressed. If we have failed at something, there is a very good possibility that:

We did not have the information we needed
We did not have the talent we needed
We did not have a clear vision and compelling vision we needed.

So, we must take a cold-hearted, steely-eyed look at the future and say, "okay, what did I not have that I needed?" And we must get it before we start over.

Information

There are those who know things we don't know. As we tackle a new project, we need to find those people who have the information we lack, and learn from them the information that will remove this external weakness. It may be counselors and coaches with whom we meet personally to help assess areas of ignorance we have, and who fill in the critical missing information to guide us to greater success. Or, it may be authors, bloggers and other internet or public figures that we do not meet with personally, but from whom we can gain information we need for next-time success.

Talent

There are those who can do what we cannot do. It may be a physical skill such as public speaking, or an aptitude skill, such as knowing how to program computers or write code for internet sites, or a professional skill such web-site design. Whatever it may be, we must be clear on whether or not we have all the talent we might need for our next project.

Vision

A major cause of failure in many projects is a lack of clear vision for what we are wanting to achieve. Foggy vision yields foggy effort and foggy results. Focusing a clear vision is often more difficult than it may seem, and it often has to take shape over time with many revisions. There are many resources, both books and internet sites, that can help with this challenging goal. Securing the Necessary Help You may be saying… as I have said to myself before… “Easy for you to say! I’ve tried to get the help I needed, and couldn’t do it!” I know. I know. It can be a significant challenge, especially if finances are a limitation (as they usually are). Yet it doesn’t change what has to be done. We still have to get the information, talent and vision we need or our next project is doomed! It just changes how we get it. Michael Hyatt suggests that when we cannot afford the necessary help, we might:

barter (I’ll do your taxes if you’ll help me build a web site)
enlist volunteers (there may be those who actually enjoy doing what you need, and would enjoy working on a meaningful project with you)
recruit interns (high school or college students may be willing to help you in exchange for a letter of recommendation from you when they apply for a future job. See this post from Michael Hyatt for examples.)

The “success” literature is agreed – and common sense tells us - that we must get what we need for success before starting over, and that we cannot let the lack of those resources stop us altogether, or we are done for. We likely will be able to get the help we need to succeed if we are patient, creative and persistent. This applies not merely to businesses, but also to ministries and Christian endeavors such as rearing children, building a strong and rewarding marriage, launching new ministries, etc. Conclusion If God is knocking on the door of your life, drawing you to succeed in something… and perhaps calling you to recover from a failure and start over… there is a world of resources out there. Again, we can draw on the wisdom of Winston Churchill, as we did last week: “Success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” The key is to envision clearly what you want, get the information and talent you need, and to never give up.

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