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Food for Living: The Success of Failing in Life
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends
It is no secret that everyone wants to be a success. No one wants to be a failure. But the irony of life is that in order to succeed in life, you must fail. Success and failure are terms used to describe how we did at a particular event in our life events, not people, not how we are in totality.
Failure comes in different stages of life. Though some people might say they passed their exams on the first attempt, accomplished success in their first year of business or even made great impacts due to their great advisors and mentors, and research they did, great minds only know too well that in the journey of life, failure is a necessary component of success.
Failure and success mean different people to different people and they react differently. Some people take failure personally; these set of people see it as a permanent situation and give up, and there are people who use it as a lesson; they do not take it personally but as a temporary setback.
Just like you won’t value a good man/woman until you lose him/ her to another woman/man, the same way, you can never appreciate success unless you have failed. Failure humbles you.
We have all failed in several capacities in life. While some people fail and wail, other rational minds will fail and pick up the lessons. Failures come in different shapes and sizes of life. Failure can come to you in your early or late years of marriage, business, careers, and life. It’s quite unfortunate to know that many people don’t know that failure can prevent disaster in their life. For instance, won’t you prefer leaving an abusive marriage than dying in the marriage? Wouldn’t you like to experience betrayal or fraud from a friend than to lose a fortune that will cost you all you have labored in life? That goes to tell you some failures are a blessing in disguise.
As human beings, we are scared of failure. These failures arise as a result of phobia or the fear of the unknown. We fail to understand that when we embrace of face our fear, there’s a probability of succeeding. Imagine having the fear of talking to a lady you like just because you are scared she might turn you down, imagine having fear of starting a project just because you feel you are not prepared for the task, you fail to think out the box, you fail to realise that nobody has ever gotten it 100% right before they embarked on their project.
According to Dr. Yomi Garnett a Life Coach “it’s impossible to evolve into your full potential unless you face adversity and learn from t. Life’s great victories come from overcoming defeats and setbacks. May your own road be rough enough for you to profit from the portholes and narrow bridges.
The sad part of life is that many people don’t recover from their failure, they allow their failure to define them, and they blame it on circumstances. The good thing about failure is that you can turn your mess into a message, you can make your fate your faith, you turn your pain into pleasure, and your disappointment into an appointment if only you are able to think out of the box.
The advantages of failure
Failure is life’s greatest teacher
You are probably familiar with the saying. Experience is the best teacher. This is because the wise man learns from his mistakes, but the wiser man learns from other people’s mistakes. Failure will humble you. According to Ralph Heath “The quickest road to success is to possess an attitude toward failure of ‘no fear’ Failure will teach you a life lesson you won’t forget in a haste.” –, When you fail well, life will show you the reality of life. One key lesson in failure is that it shows the kind of person you are. That’s why it is always said “never let success get to your head, and never let failure get to your heart.
Just to understand the practical nature of failure and success. Imagine a newborn baby. When a baby is first learning to walk, he/she is going to fall down many times. This, in fact, is a failure, but as time goes time the baby’s leg will be strong and he/she will be able to work well without staggering.
Why It is Necessary to Fail
Knowledge
The knowledge you will gain from failure can be harnessed in the future to overcome that very failure that inflicted so much pain in the first place. Nothing can replace the knowledge gained from failure. When Thomas Edison famously failed nearly 10,000 times to create a commercially viable electric lightbulb, with each failure, he gained the knowledge of just one more avenue that didn’t work. It was the accumulated knowledge developed from nearly 10,000 failed attempts that ultimately led to his success.
Resilience
One of the true test of failure is resilience. This is because resilience goes a long way to show how passionate and eager a progressive is eager to push. In order to achieve great success, we must be resilient. Because, if we think that we’re going to succeed on the first try or even the first few tries, then we’re sure to set ourselves up for a far more painful failure.
Growth
According to Marilyn Monroe “Just because you fail once, doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don’t, then who will, sweetie?”
Failure helps us to grow in life. When you fail at a particular task, the knowledge and experience you will gain will make you strategic in planning. The good thing about this type of failure is that it makes you grow. When we see successful people celebrating their business, marriage, academic achievement, or event career, it will be good to ask them about their failures and how they were able to come this fear. When we fail, we grow and mature as human beings. We reach deeper meanings and understandings about our lives and why we’re doing the things that we’re doing.
Value
Do you know failure can be an asset? Imagine a divorcee, politician, or businessman sharing their mistakes with the world. Many people will pay to listen to them because they have practical insight based on their experience. The value lies at the heart of success and a lack of value is a fundamental pillar to failure. To appreciate value, write out what you failed at and why you failed? What could you have done differently? How will you tackle those failures in the future when you’re faced with them? How will you learn from the past to help shape a bigger and brighter future?
How to Recover from Failure
1. Ignore the Naysayers
When you fail, surely there will be the people telling you, “I told you so,” Ignore those people. Ignore the naysayers. Be glad you showed up and learned one of two things.
2. Understand that it’s Okay to Fail
One mistake we do in life is to assume that it’s not okay to fail. It’s okay to fail. But it’s not okay to give up when you fail.
3. Leverage your failures
Each failure is simply feedback on how to perfect your craft. Know that nothing works unless you act. According to Arthur Jones, you can’t teach anybody anything, success comes from good judgments. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment”.
In conclusion, as you go through the journey of life, fall and stand gallantly because that’s one sure way of succeeding in life.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He’s a mindset coach and public speaker. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the author of the acclaimed book Design Your Destiny – Actualizing Your Birthright To Success and President of gloemi.com. He can be reached via info@gloemi.com
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends,
The importance of timing cannot be overemphasized. Timing is everything in life. It is critical to one’s success. You can lose your money and get it back in many folds. You can even lose your health and get it back all things being equal, but when you lose time, you can hardly get it back again.
The importance of timing can be seen in crops. Every crop has a season, a good farmer won’t plant maize when it’s time for oranges, nor will he plant pears when it’s the season for mangoes.
Time is very instrumental to the success and failure of anyone. Imagine having a meeting or interview at 9:00am and you arrive at 10:10am, it will take the grace of God to be interviewed. As an employee, apart from one not being able to diligently do his job, one of the fastest ways for an employee to lose his job is by being late to work.
When I was in New York Law School studying Taxation law, I did a course titled, the Problem of Timing. During the semester, I learnt about cash and accrued income. Let me do some academic exercise here. In cash income, just like the name entails, one is paid in cash as soon as the work is completed. It’s just like going to the market to make a purchase. One can either pay directly with cash or with debit or credit card. But Accrued income refers to revenue a company has earned by providing goods or services, but for which payment has not yet been received, one will have to do the work first before getting paid. This is applicable when one works in either a public or private organization where one is paid either weekly, bi-weekly or at the end of the month depending on the stipulated mode of payment.
It’s important to note that before the money is paid either in cash or accrued, one would have earned it. It’s just like one learning g before earning, and one will have to update to upgrade. These are just the practical principles that will work with life.
In the same way, in life there’s a seed time and harvest time. It’s a universal principle of life. Whether as a parent, entrepreneur, student or employee. As a parent, if you don’t train your kids very well, they will grow up to reflect the opposite of what you desire. As an entrepreneur when you invest in your business, you will get the reward in due time. As a student, if you take your studies seriously, your grades will improve, and as an employee, you stand to get promotions and opportunities when you add value to your work. In summary, one will have to put in the work before recognition comes on.
To understand how seedtime and harvest work, imagine where parents tend to like one child more than others just because they see potential in him, or he’s smart, hardworking or even creative. They fail to understand that every child is different and as such their timing can be different. Some kinds take time to develop.
I personally believe there’s something so unique about each individual which God has deposited in everyone of us. It’s just a matter of time for it to manifest. Your timing of manifestation is different from your siblings and colleagues.
Personally, I didn’t mature fast with my contemporaries. Overtime, I have seen much improvement in my personal and professional life. Maybe because I have added value to my work with the assistance of mentors and good friends, or God had to humble my colleagues and mentors . Why do I say this? During my formative years, I had little or nothing to show for it. I was looking at my contemporaries as mentor and seeing my mentors as small gods whose feat is unattainable, but now, the reverse seems to be case as I have developed capacity some of my colleagues are yet to attain, while I have even surpassed the achievement of my some of my mentors in some quarters.
In all these, they are all surprised how it happened. Some are yet to comprehend or articulate the feat. It’s just like watching a film where everyone slept and woke up to see the game and tides have changed. The secret behind it is the seed time and harvest time. I was probably learning the trade while in the wilderness, and when the training season matured and ripe enough to be harvested, I became attractive to almost everyone who loved the seed I was producing.
There are litany of examples of people, who have been in the wilderness during the seed planting season. Let’s take a case study of Joseph in the Bible, his journey to stardom took a little twist. Despite the travails he experienced in the hands of his siblings who sold him, his experience while in the jail, and with Portiphar’s wife, who tried to seduce him; they were all set ups for success. The moral here is Joseph seed time and harvest time was quite different, it wasn’t a smooth journey. Ordinarily, one would have cursed his siblings or his friends who were with him in prison and forgot him after they were released. But at the end of time, everything worked out for his favor. Joseph’s seed days were his dark days while in the wilderness.
Another inspiring story of note was that of Pastor Ibukun Awosika, the former board Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria. She once shared a pathetic story during her formative years of being in business. According to her, she sojourned for about 15 years. She cried because lines were not adding up for her and she wouldn’t do what her contemporaries were doing to get opportunities. At a point in her business, it appeared like she was in a race of own life because everything seemed to be against her, but at the appropriate time, lines began to fall in place for her. Appointments, business opportunities, favours and goodwill began to fall in place for her. Again, she had a fair share of seed time.
An interesting question I would like to ask you is, what’s your seed time? Have you ever been in the wilderness when you appeared to be fixed? It’s unfortunate many people are not willing to pass through the storms or experience seeds and harvest time. Amidst all these, one must do some work before they get opportunities. However, before such opportunities will come up, one will have to plant the seed.
In conclusion, seed time and harvest time is critical in the journey of life. Take a seat and determine what seed you would like to sow and what you’ll like to harvest.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the founder of Gloemi. He’s a Transformative Human Capacity and Mindset coach. He is also a public speaker, youth advocate, creative writer and author of Design Your Destiny Design Your and Unleash Your Destiny . He can be reached via info@gloemi.com
By Eric Elezuo
The Senate has suspended Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghen for six months over her sexual harassment accusation and other disputes against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
The Senate also withdrew her salaries for the period of the suspension, as well as her security details.
The chamber however, soft-pedaled on the salaries and allowances of her aides, who it was argued would not have any source of livelihood within the period.
Globacom is welcoming new customers on its network with the introduction of the e-SIM. The e-SIM activated in any Gloworld shop or Dealer outlet comes with an introductory free 5GB data when the customer buys a data plan of N1,500 or more.
Customers already on other networks can now join the Glo network with e-SIM as an additional SIM. Existing Glo customers can also enjoy this “SIM-less” freedom.
With the e-SIM, customers no longer have to worry about space for a physical SIM on their phones. The e-SIM is a software-based digital chip built directly into smartphones or wearable devices, thus eliminating the need for a physical SIM card for customers.
The use of e-SIM enables customers to have seamless switching between phone numbers without a physical SIM. It is ideal for upwardly mobile people who travel frequently. The e-SIM also guarantees security, as unlike physical SIM, it is harder to remove from devices. It is also eco-friendly and reduces plastic waste.
Globacom’s launch of the e-SIM enables enables it to cater to high-net-worth individuals and enterprise customers, and it also reinforces the company’s commitment to providing seamless and future-ready services to its customers.
A customer seeking to activate the Glo e-SIM needs to check the compatibility of the mobile handset by dialling *#06# on his or her phone. If an EID number reflects on the mobile screen, the device is e-SIM compatible.
“The customer can then proceed to the nearest Gloworld shop or Glo Dealer outlet to migrate to e-SIM. The process takes only a few minutes and the customer can thereafter begin to enjoy the use of an e-SIM”, the Marketing Department disclosed.
