Don’t Fail To Fail -By Samuel Ufot Ekekere

As a young man trying to cut my teeth in business, I had assumed that the road would be rosy all the way. During my university days, my course mates and I had the premonition that the world outside the university was filled with diamonds and all we’d had to do was go pick them. We discussed gloriously about the opportunities we expected to arrive and we were filled with so much hope. It turned out however that the beats of life doesn’t flow the way everyone of us assumed it would and we each found our way with our first major failure, our first major setback, not getting a job after school.

I had suffered from depression having failed to find something to get busy with immediately after school and I checked out with many of my colleagues. Some of them were in worst situations than I was and it was not easy. I began however to find my way around what I could do to help get past my failure. I observed some of my colleagues too who were getting past their immediate failures and I decided I wouldn’t be left out from the immediate success stories. I needed to do something immediately.

My failure to get a job helped me rediscover self. I discovered I could do lots more than my immediate academic preoccupation so I set out at developing my talents. I began to write about my experiences and about life with my writing talent and then I began a school with my teaching talent. I’ve actually failed since then in almost everything I’ve tried to do but I just get getting better with each failure We are often afraid of failure.

We have grown with that mentality that failure is way too bad so we crunch and get depressed when we fail. We feel that the road to success must be so smooth with all the great expectations coming through at the end of it. However, success only arrives after failure.

There cannot be a chance of success if there is no chance of failure. Failure is a propellant for success. There is chance that if one persists beyond today’s failure and one allows failure push him, the other side called success will arrive. Only mediocres accept their failures as the last bus stop of their journey in life. Failure helps us develop important virtues that success actually requires. Because success is absolutely dependent on failure, failure helps us build the courage to succeed. The list is endless of successes that have arrived beyond the barriers of failures. You also have your personal success stories that are propelled by your past failures if you look through your story line. Our world is what it is today is because people failed and have continued to fail. Failure helps create solutions to problems in life. Failure of our roads have resulted in the design and creation of better roads, failure of our education system has resulted in better improved education, failure of our health institutions and systems have resulted in better healthcare care delivery. Better only arrives from failures.

The brains behind many of the inventions we enjoy today were brains that had to fail to rediscover a better way of developing inventions that solves human problems. Edison’s electric bulb, Karl’s automobile, the Wright brother’s air plane, Diesels diesel engine and every other human invention arrived because failure provided a need for a solution and the process for the provision of solutions required another set of failure for a correct solution to arrive.

We often find out that when success arrives, it arrives with a new set of failures. These failures were often unanticipated at the arrival of the initial success. This is why we get improvements and remodeling of initial inventions to carter for the arriving failures. The planes the Wright brothers designed is not the plane we use today. There have being series of changes and additions to provide for the new failures observed after the brothers succeed with their flying machines. Are you failing? Patiently get around your failures. Success is hanging around the corner waiting and something better will always arrive after a series of failure. If you are failing, it is no problem. Just fail on, somewhere along the way, the right failure will arrive for the right solution. Please don’t fail to fail.

Samuel Ufot Ekekere writes from Uyo, Nigeria. As a teacher, motivator, and writer, he writes inspiring writs on personal development for all categories of persons. He believes everyone needs motivation. Connect on twitter @naijasoars and www.facebook.com/soarnaija, www.linkedin.com/naijasoars +2347062809301