Bridge to Success

Life's Like This — A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame others for his failures. I believe it would be safe to assume that we all go through life hoping, perhaps even dreaming of finding success in our life's ambitions. The path to success is often riddled with obstacles and a series of setbacks that keep us from achieving our goals. And with those setbacks, disappointment and depression can occur causing us to doubt if our dreams and aspirations will ever materialize. At times like this, it is easy to give up hope, to throw in the towel and quit pursuing our goals. Quite often, we are quick to blame others for our failures rather than examining our role in our inability to realize our dreams. Once we start down the path of blaming others, we will find increased difficulty in achieving success until we remove the blinders that hinder our personal growth.

Transforming Our Failures

Life’s Like This — However badly we may have failed in the past, today is not too late for us to put our complete trust in God. Failure will eventually place its foot print in each of our lives — it’s inevitable. No one can go through life and not experience some kind of failure, especially when we set goals or high expectations for ourselves. While we may strive to be successful in whatever endeavor we choose, none of us can control circumstances that are beyond our control. And even those circumstances that we have the ultimate control over, our behavior and our personal choices, we always seem to make decisions that test the wisdom of our choices. Failure, however, should not define us — we are more than the sum of all our failures, we are more than the random acts of choices and behaviors that we make in life. While it may be discouraging to experience failure after failure, those failures can often be stepping stones to success if we choose to embrace the lessons that can be learned from them. One of the most profound lessons we can learn is to put our faith and trust in God in every area of our life, those we have control over, and those we have absolutely no control over.

Past, Present and Future

Life’s Like This — “To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.” [Source, Alan Cohen] — So often we get caught up in a vicious cycle of regrets, often perceiving past mistakes as an indicator for future success. We sometimes think, if only I could go back and relive this part of my life, I would do things entirely different. But the truth is, our lives cannot be replayed as Bill Murray did in the movie Groundhog Day — our past is the past and we are stuck with it. We simply cannot go back in the past and change what has happened, but we do have the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and create a new future, here in the present, by calling on the wisdom we gained from our life experiences. While it may at times be difficult to let go of the past, if we can muster up the courage to see beyond the past and look to the future with new hope and vision, then all sorts of possibilities can become a reality.