Learn From Losing

Reflection #16 from my book titled,

Reflective Empowerment.

Reflection 16. Learn from losing

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 so

called failure should be that you can learn something useful from the process of

disappointment.

Every experience of success or failure has a lesson waiting to be learned.

Learn the lesson from every experience. Losing is never fun. It hurts in so many

different ways, especially when it’s something that you were really looking forward

to, or something that you were passionately involved in, or something that

you wanted badly.

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. Eventually, I retired as

chairman and managing director of a commercial bank.

Instead of having your negative monologues, 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.