It’s not easy to be told you’re not good enough or that someone else is better, but there is a worse consequence. What you do going forward once someone tells you that you don’t quite measure up will be the difference between success and regret.
The one thing I keep constantly reminding myself and my children is that nothing in life stays the same. We are always moving and things are always changing and so the idea of measuring up or being good enough is always temporary. There is always movement up and down, but some of us, myself included, look at failure as a person and not as an event as Zig Ziglar points out.
When we frustrate ourselves and are told we are not good enough, that is a failure of the moment. We are not the failure, and so we have two choices. We can make decisions that benefit us short term or we can be patient and work on something that will turn out to be the long road. I have learned that the longest road is often the best short cut, as there are no short roads to begin with.
Disappointment is not good. Being told you are second best, rightly or wrongly, feels terrible, but people who dream wake up the next morning and they keep going. They do the right things that need to be done, despite visible results, because that is who they are. You don’t become successful. You are successful.
I think you get in life who you are in life. If you’re a great friend than you’ll have real friends. If you do good and honest work than you’ll be rewarded for it, one way or another.
The long term is much better than the short term.
We cannot let our feelings or other people’s decisions get in our way. This is why its important to know what we want long term. We have to see the studio we want to have, and the hockey team we want to be a part of in the future. We have to see our future and keep building our lives and never stop until this future embraces us one day.
Failure is tough, but thinking short term and looking for short cuts, or quitting outright is a lot tougher in the long run.
Life changes pretty fast and when we least expect it. If we learn to focus on what happens next, we will be pleasantly surprised that we got to where we wanted to go, and we won’t remember the time it took or all the things that tried to stop us along the way.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@divewithchuck
