How Do You Look at Failures?

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 Let me share to you a short story.

Background: I'm working in a BPO Company in the Philippines.

Working on a night shift has been a struggle for me. I've been working on a day shift for 6 years and when I transfer to a BPO company, I found it really difficult to keep myself awake at night to work. But due to financial needs, I need to condition my mind, health and body to work every night.

A great opportunity came in the first quarter of 2012 where there's ramp in one of the line of business of our company and they would  be needing few selected individuals to work on a day shift. "Yey! It's my chance to work on a normal basis again," I thought. The candidates would be qualified based on the result of the interview that will be conducted by one of the Operations Manager.

Here comes the interview day. I thought I was ready. I prepared answers to the commonly asked questions during interviews. The interview was scheduled from 4AM-6AM.

At 3AM, my team lead approached me and told me that she had something to tell me. I discovered that I had an escalation. Escalation is an incident where the clients reported directly to your manager because you committed mistakes or you did not meet their expected results. I was so depressed. I felt that I was so dumb and stupid. I lost my concentration on the interview because I was so focused on my escalation.

My schedule of interview came. The first question was raised.

Guess what happened?

There were no words coming out from my mouth.

I can't answer the question. I maybe knew the answer, but I found it difficult to express it.

I was so nervous.. until I answered the question in Tagalog (which is not a good practice and really sounded funny!)

Of course, you know the result of the interview. I didn't get the day job.

Again, I felt so depressed. I was asking myself, "Am I really that dumb?"

Then one day, a talk was given to the church about facing failures. The preacher said "Your failures are temporary."

Those words hit me. Then I realized that it's really true. I might fail now but it's not yet the end of the world. I can still do something, I can still do better. I can still be the best.

I realized that I should not be worried too much on my failures. I should take failures as an opportunity to act more intelligently. Failures are better than successes, because they are the main sources of our most important lessons in life. 

Have you ever learned a lesson when you are at a peak of success? Maybe yes, but only few.

When you fail,

You start to think.

You start to ponder.

You start to feel pain.

You start to ask questions - Why did I fail? What can I do so this would not happen again?

If you are wondering what happened to me after I had an escalation and did not get the position for the day job - I started to improve my work. I became very eager to learn. I could not forget these failures, that's why I did my best to perform well on my job. I began to ask questions when something was not clear. I began to engage in training and activities so I can get more skills.

Guess what? After 6 months, I was awarded as the best employee.

Failures are really blessings. They teach us the most important lessons of victory.
It doesn't matter how many times you fail, what's important is you don't give up and you keep doing what is good.

How about you? How Do You Look at Failures?

Your Online Life Coach,

Maya