Bad experiences are the key to great success.
Imagine you are sitting in a penthouse office with beautiful girls and smart guys working in their formal dress. The smell of fresh air is soothing the calmness of mind and the sight of blue sky outside the office window is just amazing. You are enjoying the environment when an office boy offers you the French Pastis. Isn’t it awesome?
Now imagine you are walking into The Great Sahara desert with no roads and absolutely no idea of what direction you need to go. The sun is over your head at 55 degrees and is making your body sweat-wet. After walking few more miles with your cracking lips and almost collapsed throat, someone offers you a glass of water.
Which is tastier? The French Pastis or the water? Obviously water. That is the value of success after bad experiences. Not a single successful woman or man will ever say that she had never known what the failure is. We fail because we still have to do better.
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”. -Thomas Alva Edison.
You failed? No problem everyone does. We are programmed to walk by falling. Do not fall and cry, have faith on you. Rise to walk again and keep falling until you learn how to walk fast.
I have a five, simple yet powerful, step preparation guide for you which will help in making you believe in yourself again.
Step-1: Say goodbye to sorrow.
“Negative thoughts are always harmful in any form”.
So the first step to getting rid off your sorrow is to stop thinking about your past. The bad thing about negative thoughts is, it always comes back. The more you try to ignore it, it bounces back with more force. The best way to counter this is to engage your mind in something which you always admire.
Whenever my mind is trapped in hotchpotch and I am unable to write anything, I stop writing and stop thinking about writing. I spend time with small kids in my locality. I love interacting with them and their cuteness makes me forget everything.
When I am done with them, I sit back to my desk with raw-fresh mind and start making a list of what I am planning to write and then start writing. This increases my productivity. You must find a place where you can forget everything, which gives you freshness in mind. Some people enjoy cycling or mountaineering, some love swimming and some love shopping. You find your freshener spot.
Make two lists. One of the things you can do at best and the other with what you think you can do but are less confident. It can be anything which first comes to your mind, just write it down and then categorize it.
This method helps you to know about yourself. We sometimes doubt on our self because we do not know what we are capable of.
And the easiest way is to make your list. This method is tried and recommended by many people of past as well as our generation. Once you know, what you can do, you can hear the grinning sound of your self-confidence. And once you know what you cannot do, chances of failure reduces to its extreme low.
What is the purpose of Commander’s speech just before the war starts?
This is all about motivation. An inspiration to victory. An aspiration to die for the country.
To be alive and to die calm, for both we need a thing which inspires us. Finding inspiration after step 3 is quite easy. You can find a person, place or thing under your niche which inspires you to keep you engaged with your work and do not allow you to think about the failure of past and the fear of future. It increases your focus and faith in you. This is a form of self-help.
There is no exercise better for the heart than helping others. A study was done by the Journal Psychology and Aging, in 2013 revealed that adults over the age of 50 who reported volunteering at least 200 hours in a year were 40 percent less likely to have developed hypertension.
“Helping others helps us in Pain management and gives peace of mind”.
When you are helping others, the first two steps, I told you earlier are done on its own and there is no reason left within your mind to think about your past. You will be more focused towards achieving new heights and building self-belief at its best.