Why do I fail all the time? Many of us have had or still have this opinion about ourself, I sure did swim in this stew of doubt and despair many times. I used to build myself up taking action in doing whatever I deemed necessary to have success. I started building muscles for whatever reason, reading books to become more intelligent, jogging to be faster and so on, but… and this is a big but, I was still failing to achieve my desired outcome. It wasn’t because I was not organized or because of laziness, it wasn’t even because I had little to no help or resources, I just could not have any success, ending the whole thing in calming myself with excuses. After a while I was beginning to repeat the process, to hope, to try and do something again. I am human too, no matter how much I was telling myself that I was stupid and I didn’t deserve anything, I was back at trying again, to succeed in something. I had the desire, I had the determination, I had many ideas, I was building up a nice self-esteem, but, with no warnings, I ended up failing again. I did this dance of failing many times only to fail every time. My mental power could only support me for so long. So, what was I doing wrong? I began to think that my entire life must be a punishment for something I did, and for a long time I accepted my harsh situation. Many years passed and I was still a failure, but old age took big bites from the energy of my life, leaving me hopeless in a crude reality. You see, I have found my answer in the end, but the answer has time and youth as the first two words – in my case only, old age is not an impediment, it applies only to my desires. There is an irony I will carry with me as regret.

Every excuse opens the door to failure and no matter how determined you are or how intelligent you think you are, excuses will open all your doors to mend your pain but to let your negativity dump tons of led into your heart, not to options. Every time you ignore a red flag, every time you delay something, every time you let your excuses dictate your direction, you will fail, fail enough times and you will have a looser mentality like I had. The options are unlimited but only few of them are going to work for each person, every case is different and you must have the courage to dump only whatever is not working, not the whole bloody plan. Failing is just another word for giving up or not finishing the job, failing is an unfinished plan, nothing more, you could take any failure from your past and finish its job. I did so. I’ve searched for my past failures and figured out a new plan for the finish line. Don’t you go back into depression, filling your head with negativity, of course is going to be hard, every time you find yourself thinking like that you should do something kind for yourself, something that makes you happy, and come back to your plans afterwards.
Even if you finish your old plan without the success you were hoping for, it will not be felt as a failure, failure is a directive in our brain that applies to unfinished plans. Who knows? Finishing an old plan could give us much information about the future ones, is called experience and is better to learn having it done than guessing around what might have been. They say that everything is possible, where are your limitations if so? Are they in your mind or in reality? You must add an ending in your mind to every action you take and to every thought you start. This is the best way not to feel as a failure, the best I know, anyway. We should not succeed in absolute everything we do or have all the answers, life is a journey of discovery, be kind to yourself when you fail. I wish I knew this when I was young.

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FIN

Roberto Palu