Learn From Disappointments

Learn From Disappointments

Learn From Disappointments

In life you experience both success and failure. When you fail or lose, it simply means that you did not get what you wanted. Your attitude towards disappointment should be that you can learn something useful from the event. Every experience of success or failure has a lesson to be learned. Losing is never fun, as it hurts in so many different ways, especially when it’s something that you wanted badly—but learn the lesson.

I recall in my mid 20s I was denied the opportunity to be appointed a Management Cadet Prison Officer, although I had topped the list of applicants at the interview. I was really disappointed, and resentful of the Senior Administrative Officer who advised that it was a waste of my talents to be placed in Prison Administration. How dare him to determine what was good for me. It meant dashing my plans to become an attorney-at-law.

However, learning from the experience, I went on to obtain a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom for a degree in business economics, finishing up being a chartered secretary, and a chartered accountant as well. Eventually, I retired as chairman and managing director of a commercial bank. Develop the attitude that disappointments merely occur to strengthen your resolve!

Instead of having negative monologues about your disappointments, you have the opportunity to take time to reflect, rethink, recollect or re-group on what to do differently for your future success. Follow this process, and you are guaranteed to come out swinging harder and better the next time. You have everything to gain by examining the seeds of disappointment, to learn the success story that they embody. Press on, and learn.