Throughout our school lives we have been taught to work hard and get good grades. This is our training. We are taught that failure is bad. If you fail you haven’t worked hard enough, you haven’t done what you are supposed to do. In a school situation, this may be true. When you fail you haven’t understood the assignment or the material. The failures give you an idea of where you need to put your time and energy and what you need to work on.
This is true in our lives too. The failures tell us something is wrong, that something needs to change.
We have a choice at this point, we can learn from the lesson or we can blame the failure on something or someone else. This is the crucial turning point.
One of the best examples from my life has been with my relationships. I have been married twice. The first time I blamed the relationship failure on him. So I learned nothing. Nothing about my patterns or my issues.
My second marriage was a different story. I thought I had picked someone completely different than my first husband. That turned out to not be the case.
When that marriage broke up it was time to look at myself. I needed to look at my relationship patterns. Why was I picking the wrong people? I needed to learn the lessons from my marriage failures. I needed to explore the choices I was making and why I was making them. I needed to learn my patterns and where they originated.
This took some time and it was painful. It was painful to admit that I was a factor in my relationship failures. This was the first time I was taking responsibility for creating my relationships. Once I was aware of my patterns I was able to see them and change them.
Why did I go through the pain of discovering my issues?
Because I am committed to living a great life and having a great love in that life.
I learned to understand it starts with me and how I treat myself. Now that I treat myself with love, I am able to accept love and give it freely.
There are lessons in everything we do. We get lessons every day from our successes and our failures.