The Challenge

On Saturday, I woke up and had a fight with my mother, I received a message from passport office that there is this and that problem with my application, my consultant refused to take my call, my laptop charger fused when I am running out of cash. In short, I had a bad day or do I put it as a challenging day.

Why call a day bad or unfortunate? What happens when we cross one level of a game that we are playing and move to next level? Doesn't the number of hurdles increase? Doesn't the difficulty level increase? Do we call it a bad or unfortunate level – No, we don’t. In fact, we take it as a more challenging level to be tackled with more mindfulness and concentration and what a feeling when we cross that level!

What we all forget is that life is also a game that every living creature is playing and a bad or unfortunate day is actually, another level to which we are promoted automatically after crossing the present level. New problems are new hurdles that we have to overcome to reach the end. Why curse the day of our promotion and why call it bad if it is more challenging?

You may think that I am mad but try my recipe of bad day some time – no, it won’t turn your day into a good or lucky one but it will make you feel a lot better and as I always insist why become sad over the things that are not in your hand, instead feel good about those that are in your hands. Do you realize that you learn the most on the day that you have labelled as bad? Success is a friend, failure is a guide. So, next time you have bad day feel happy about it, be grateful that you have it and make the most of it...   

MISTAKES

If you haven’t made a mistake today, then you have not learnt anything today.

Mistakes are the stepping stone to success – one can never attain specialization unless one has made some mistakes. However, specialization here must not be confused with perfectionism – Perfection is only created to be witnessed by millions and attained by none. Perfection resides at horizon – the more we move forward, the farther we have to go to attain it and yet it is unattainable. Perfectionists never make mistakes and hence, no one is a perfectionist. That must not discourage us, we can always improve and there is no limit to it.

The question is which mistake is good and which is not – wise men make one kind of mistakes once and foolish men make the same mistake over and over again. Mistakes are not significantly important – what matters is the learning from mistakes. If we haven’t learnt anything from them, then we have wasted a big opportunity. Though it is believed that experience is the best teacher, it is not mandatory to gain experience to learn lessons – one can learn from others’ mistakes as well.

Atychiphobia – the persistent fear of failure. One way or the other, we all fear to fail but becoming the slave of such fears has devastating consequences. It is horrible to try and fail but it is lethal not to try because you fear to fail. One may not succeed in one go but persistent endeavor will definitely reap results. Moreover, what is it to succeed, when you have never failed? – It is just like appreciating the light without having seen the dark – indeed, the real taste of success comes after a series of failure. Imagine yourself and your friend on different sea voyages – you completed the voyage earlier and haven’t dealt with a storm but your friend took a lot more time, battling the storms of the sea – at the end, who is the best sailor? Successes provide accolades but failures provide improvements and the more the improvements, the better we are and hence, worthy for even more accolades. Conclusively, the art is how to fail and not how to succeed (obviously one is not supposed to count in deliberate failures).

MAKE A MISTAKE EVERYDAY, LEARN EVERYDAY & IMPROVE EVERYDAY.