Saturday, August 06, 2005
Failure, At What Cost?
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas A. Edison
Personally, I could not have stumbled upon this quote at a better time. To give you some background insight as to why... I am currently in the final stages of my graduate studies in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. It has been a fast and furious ride for the last 11 months.
The other day I was feeling so overwhelmed that the thought of throwing in the towel sounded pretty good. Yep, that would have been the easy thing to do, just chuck all my efforts and hard work down the drain when I am so close to the finish line. Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?
The bottom line, what was at the core of my wanting to quit was not my feelings of being overwhelmed, but my fear of failing...of not being able to cut the mustard. The funny thing is, if I had quit, giving up on myself, my abilities and something I have worked so hard for... that would have been the ultimate failure.
Even Thomas Edison had his setbacks. He made 1000 light bulb attempts before finally creating the one that worked. Thomas did not view the 1000 attempts as failures, but rather as learning experiences that got him closer to success. He knew that with each attempt he was eliminating any possibility for failure.
I learned some valuable lessons this past week:
1) When I feel like quitting reaching out to friends, family and my own coach really makes a difference. It is with those people I can express my fears and talk them through.
2) Even if score lower than I would like on my finals or I struggle with a paper, just by trying I am succeeding.
Just remember; NEVER give up on yourself and the things you want. Doing so is the ultimate failure!
Posted by Pam at 3:43:28 PM in Quotes with Impact (30) | Permalink | Comments (0)
