Today, the Honda Motor Co. employs thousands of workers in factories across the globe — all because one man refused to allow failures and unfortunate circumstances to stop his dream.
We all have failures in our past. Even remote slip-ups from childhood can reach into our adult lives and stop us from maintaining a “true North” attitude. A child’s flubbed line in the first-grade school play can stop him from ever becoming an effective public speaker. One missed foul shot can cripple an aspiring athlete’s confidence.
To maintain a positive attitude, we must use our past failures as learning experiences to future growth.
A famous inventor was once asked about his many failed experiments. The inventor replied that, if he made 1,000 mistakes, he learned 1,000 ways not to proceed with his inventions.
Ancient wisdom offers several relevant ways to view failure in an affirming way. The biblical book of Proverbs advises: “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again.” The ancient Chinese sage book, the “Tao Te Ching,” states: “Failure is opportunity. Blaming is wasted opportunity.”
Once we embrace a positive attitude and discover what makes us happy — what we want — we can review our past honestly, acknowledge mistakes without unnecessary guilt and get ready to build a new path on our most amazing journey.
