By Leland Pulley
Over the years any adult will have some disappointments and experience failure to various degrees in activities, endeavors, and relationships. And the older this adult becomes, the more real and meaningful this statement becomes in his life.
I now have a few decades of adulthood behind me, and with this has come increased perspective. In looking back, I can certainly see mistakes and wrong decisions. I wish I would have done certain things instead of other things. I wonder how much I could have achieved compared to what I did achieve. But my track record is absolute. It bears witness for and against me. The only thing I can do at this point is learn from the past and strive to do better in the present. Hopefully, in the future I will look back on today and be happy with what I see. Take a moment to reflect on your life and see if these statements apply to you also. And then ask, why many things are so obvious now and were not at the time?
When you are younger, it is natural and easy to be optimistic and idealistic. You want the best and the most for yourself. You may have dreams that raise you above others in position or wealth or popularity. If you get involved in something, you expect to succeed, and not have people nor forces outside of yourself impede your progress nor limit the achievement of your goals. However, with time you soon realize that this vision of the future is simply not going to happen with most adults. They are going to have problems along the way. There will be disappointments in themselves and in others. They will experience failure, not only due to their own mistakes or lack of effort or wrong decisions, but due to other people and circumstances beyond their control. And of course, we all must remember the old saying that equality is an ideal and in real world, life is not always fair. It has not been, it is not now, and will not be in the future, even in a free society.
So, what can be done to minimize some of the disappointments that you will have and the failure that you will experience. Here are a few suggestions.
- Self-Understanding – Understand yourself well at every age and be honest in your self-assessment. What type of person are you? What skills and talents do you have or will develop? What are you really interested in doing and why? Without accurate self-understanding, it will be easy to select the wrong goals and underestimate your weaknesses. Then it will be harder to sustain your efforts over time for challenging and worthwhile endeavors.
- Requirements – For anything you want to achieve, what is really involved or required? If you do not understand this, then how can you determine whether you have the possibility of achieving it? Get the facts and be realistic so you know what you are up against, and what is in your favor and what is against you. Seek the advice and counsel of those with more experience, particularly in new areas where you want to get involved and succeed. Their wisdom can save you a lot of mistakes and grief.
- Desire – How much do you really want to achieve a particular goal? This will affect your determination to achieve it and the sacrifice over time that you are willing to make in order to realize it. Without true commitment, it will be easy to reduce your effort or give up on certain goals before reaching them.
- Evaluation – Evaluate the odds of succeeding in any endeavor. Do you have the necessary resources and personal characteristics to succeed? What obstacles stand in your way? For any commercial goals, what or who is your competition and how do you plan to beat them? Why will people choose your product or service other that of competitors?
- Realism – Be honest with yourself as you strive to determine what you will seek after and the resources you will spending in getting it. Do not overrate your abilities and underestimate your competition. This is a common trap many people fall into when starting endeavors. Be realistic and not idealistic. The world does not owe you any favors.
- Planning – Develop some type of plan and strategy for most of your major goals in life. Without this you will find yourself wasting time and other resources, and you will be less effective. This can wear you down over time and lead to lower performance. There will be discouragement and less accomplishment.
- Priorities– Adjust your priorities so it is clear what you are focusing on each year. Your top priority cannot be a large family, plus building up a business, plus seeking public office, all at the same time. You must divide your resources between various endeavors and how you do this can vary from year to year. As a younger adult you may want to stress education and job training, as well as getting your family started. As the years go by, you may want to move from an employee role to a business owner role. At some point in time you may want to change from a community volunteer to someone who actually runs for public office, or if you serve in a local office you may want to seek a state or federal office.
- Feedback – Periodically review the results of your efforts. Are you achieving what you want in various activities and endeavors? Are you satisfied with the life that you are living and what you have accomplished up till this point in time? If not, what corrections are necessary in order to be more successful and happier in the future?
People who do the things above are more successful than those who do not do them. Such individuals have less disappointments and failures. Each item above is another reason why these individuals are the ones who get the college degree, develop a strong marital relationship, become good parents, get the promotion at work, or win the election. How many of the items above do you do, and how often? It is important to slow down and evaluate your life periodically. This will help you to understand and break any negative patterns and replace them with better patterns.
Even if you do to the best of your ability all the things above, here is something important to remember. The more you try to achieve, the odds increase that you will have more disappointments along the way. There will be challenges facing you which seem impossible to meet. There will be problems for which you have no solutions at the time. It will be easy to consider yourself a failure in a particular endeavor and give up. If this is done too much, especially in high priority areas, then it will be easy to start considering yourself as a failure. Never do this.
No one is truly a failure in terms of his personal worth and dignity as a human being. No one should view himself as a failure, only that he failed to achieve in a particular endeavor. Remember, you still have control of your thoughts and feelings. You have some options and freedom of choice in many things. Even the down and out person currently can start from here and rebuild his life in a positive and constructive way, especially if he is willing to let others help him.
For most of us, reducing disappointments and the degree of failure experienced in specific aspects of our lives, is merely a matter of a course correction. In other words, we need to make some adjustments in our lives. This sounds easy, but for most people it is not easy to do. After all, people are creatures of habit and are resistant to change. What can be done? Perhaps some clarification is needed, and simplification is possible. You must think outside of the box. For example, if your job or business is not going well, what can be done to improve it or if necessary, find a new type of work? If your marriage is not going well, divorce is not necessarily the best solution. Otherwise, you can carry the same personal weaknesses into another marriage and end up with another divorce. You must determine what is going wrong and needs to be improved. Then figure out a strategy for doing this. With a revised plan of action and fresh determination, you can strive to obtain the goal or objective. This is the way to get more of the things you want.
Key Words – disappointments, failure, perspective, mistakes, reflect, self-understanding, desire, evaluation, realism, planning, priorities, feedback, patterns, challenges, problems, a course correction
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