“People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they’re really saying is that something you didn’t want to happen at all… has happened.” – This phrase from the movie “You’ve Got Mail” has haunted me since almost forever.
You’d probably hear those words when confronted with severe loss or failure. And yes, those words are often said as a consolation, but the truth is, change might be a good thing even if it’s a result of something bad that happened.
The most beautiful things are actually found in the ugliest of places, the happiest moment can spread from the saddest of events. We fail to get up again; in other words, we face temporary death in order to be able to live.
Since we are talking about work life, we will go through some points that could help to turn a failure into a success in your working or career environment.
1) Grieving: If you failed at a task, an interview, a project, a job, a whole career path, you should allow yourself to feel bad about it, because the worst thing you could ever do is deny the fact that you’ve failed.
2) Don’t grieve too much: Yes, you should feel bad that you failed, that things didn’t work out the way you wanted, but it shouldn’t take more time than necessary. You mustn’t be swallowed by a monster called ‘failure’, and that would take us to number 3.
3) Stating facts: After feeling bad about it, there’s no one who can tell you the truth about why you failed except yourself. Your inner voice is the only truth you should hang on to; being honest with yourself is the easiest way to start over.
4) Know the benefits and the myths of that failure: After confronting yourself with the reasons of failure, you should begin to state the things you need to avoid and the things you need to start doing, either by changing your whole career, loving your job, studying more, working harder, being more professional or less sensitive or wherever your thoughts take you. Again, you are the only one who knows what needs to be done and how to do it.
5) Don’t blame other people or the circumstances: There are probably other factors that resulted in that failure, but they are neither everything nor the only things. You need to pinpoint them clearly, but you also need to know how you should have responded to such circumstances, what really happened and why.
6) Change is a good thing: Yes, change is hard and uncomfortable, but we live in a changing world. You should always accept the change and more importantly, you need to accept the change that has happened to you – what you have become. The things that seemed impossible to you years ago might become possible now. The number of trials you thought you will never reach might turn into just a small number of what you can do. Your biggest passion might change to something else, something new that never crossed your mind.
It is never too late to click on the reset button and start all over.
7) Believe in yourself: There are no ground rules you should follow, or a plan you should stick to in order to turn any failure to success, because simply each scenario and each human is different. No matter how many people give you guidelines of getting up again, or how many books, or magazines you read to motivate you, there’s only one key you should follow and that is to “believe in yourself”. Don’t follow the crowd but just be your own leader, follow your guts, your dreams, bleed and roar again, believe in your capabilities, know you are here to learn more than to just be.
By: Yasmine Lasheen
Photography: Mohamed Sherif El Dib
Instagram: @mohamedeldib
EDITOR: Nada Adel Sobhi