The pond guy, Thoreau, once said, "Men are born to succeed, not to fail," and he got it mostly right. But here's the problem. We're actually born to fail a lot along the way, because that's the only way we truly succeed. We have to take our lumps to learn our lessons. But that's not meant to be the end of the game. It's not meant to be easy, but it is meant ultimately to be about success, in the right ways.
Don’t we sometimes feel as if the cards are stacked against us in this life? Think about the obstacles you’ve had to face whenever you’ve tried to do anything new and different. It can sometimes feel like life itself is just one long uphill battle.
It’s interesting in this regard to look into the biographies of very successful people. What’s amazing is that there is a nearly universal pattern to so many of their lives. Talent and hard work initially get rewarded with encouragement and nurture, only to be set up for rejection and failure. Repeated rejection. And perplexing failure. The talented individual almost gives up in a Dark Night of the Soul. Any “reasonable” person would. But somehow, our hero shows an almost supernatural ability to stick it out though all the tough times, and finally emerges into public view as an overnight sensation.
You know the old saying: “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” The fact is that we're all born multi-talented. No one utterly lacks talent. And nobody has just one. We’re also born with the ability to discover our talents, along with the will power that it takes to develop them. If we don’t give up. If we stick with the process. We finally learn what we were born to achieve. And in that respect, Thoreau was right. It's ultimately not failure that's meant for us as the last verdict, but success - a form of success that is right for each of us. But it takes that ongoing process. And that process will involve lots of trouble along the way. Remember that today. You were born to succeed. After all that failure. So go do it.
