What are you so afraid of?

Posted on January 31, 2008
Filed Under Personal Growth

Today’s thought is one of the most important you’ll ever hear from me.

It’s about Failure!

Abraham Lincoln said: “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

What did he mean?

It’s very simple: Failure does not define us—unless we let it.

If you allow failure to become a pattern in your life, you’ve done yourself a great disservice.

You’ve casted a shadow—something that’s not real, that has no substance—and this shadow stays with you.

It lurks all around you, like a cage that traps your mind or potential, preventing it to entertain possibilities of freedom and success.

If you’re convinced you can’t achieve a certain goal or reach a higher level of success, due to past failures, then you’re right; you’ll attract what you believe to be true.

We need to get past that. We need to change this way of thinking completely.

Failure is not our enemy, failure is our friend. Yes, you heard me correctly. Failure is a friend who teaches us well. Failure is a stepping stone to wisdom.

True failure, then, only really happens when we give up, when we throw in the towel and quit and let the unreal become reality.

Take Abraham Lincoln, for example. He failed at just about everything he ever tried. But he’s one of history’s greatest figures, and rightfully so.

Failures could not stop this man. In the face of constant adversity he kept moving forward, as we can see from Lincoln’s long list of failures:

1831 – Failed in business
1832 – Defeated for legislature
1833 – Again failed in business
1835 – Sweetheart died
1836 – Had a nervous breakdown
1838 – Defeated for speaker
1840 – Defeated for elector
1843 – Defeated for Congress
1848 – Defeated for Congress
1855 – Defeated for Senate
1856 – Defeated for Vice-President
1858 – Defeated for Senate
1860 – ELECTED PRESIDENT

After all this, after literally one failure after another…finally, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President.

He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of that barbaric practice we know as slavery, and he helped preserve the United States of America.

Think of Abraham Lincoln next time something you try doesn’t succeed or you fall flat on your face.

How much can you accomplish in your life—if you can only learn to acknowledge and learn from your past failures?

Failing constantly may very well been the road that paved the way for Abraham Lincoln to land in the White House, and eventually into the history books.

Will you learn from this great teacher and do the same?

Are you ready to put past failures into the history books and commit to success?

What are you waiting for?

Comments

One Response to “What are you so afraid of?”

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