failing towards success

If it doesn't work, then try something different. If it works, keep doing it. It's a simple concept, but it didn't hit me until today how this basic principle could be so inspiring. It's very common sense, but nonetheless so profound, that it's hard NOT to be excited about it!

When I think about certain times in my life, and maybe you can empathize, there are times in my life where I would have a goal, and I take steps to reach it. However, I stay so busy carrying out the steps that I forget to stop and take a look at my progress, or worse, don't know how to measure my progress. During those times, I am lead into the emotional trap of simply believing things will work if i keep pushing.

I've done a lot of believing in my life, and have seen plenty of things with my own eyes that I could only attribute to the divine, but I'm grounded enough to know that some things in life simply don't happen because you tried and you believe in it. Life, your life, moves forward through diligence IN THE RIGHT THINGS motivated and blessed by faith.

I could run a rampage through the city shooting people with an AK in the name of peace. I could believe I'll win the lotto and never buy a ticket. I could sit here waiting for the perfect girl to show up and madly fall in love with me.

I can confidently say that all of those will fail in accomplishing my goals. Not because of a lack of faith, or a lack of effort but simply because I did not focus on doing the right thing. To promote peace, I should serve. To win the lotto, I should buy first a ticket. To fall in love, I should seek to love.

Progress. That's been the word of my life the past 2 years, especially within the last 9 months, and even more so within the past 4 months. But in order to make progress, I must know how to measure it. Am I headed in the right direction? Or am I ending up in the wrong?

It's easy to fall into the many traps that prevent progress. One of the biggest ones being laziness. Being too lazy to monitor progress is the biggest pitfall out there. You've been working so hard and moving forward, and you don't want to expend more energy making sure you're doing it right. Your brain's already been wired to think you are, and therefore you're safe to assume you're moving along just fine. There's a saying that goes "ask even though you already know the road." You can never be too sure, and never too confident.

Other pitfalls can be ignorance and actually being too busy to measure results. These are not taken to be lightly either, as I know that my parents fall into the latter category. Work, work, work they did. It wasn't really until the stress was too much and they were forced to sit and think about it that they were able to progress forward.

Ultimately, though, it only comes to show that progress needs constant monitoring. You need to know what works, and what doesn't work, and get feedback. This feedback is what will take you to where you need/want to be, and if you keep doing so, you will never look back. There's no step backwards in this kind of life, but merely a side step, as all failures are pseudo-steps that move you forward.

As such, it is said that failure is simply a part of the bigger picture called success.