Every step we take is a step in a direction. Very few steps march in place, so it makes sense that the decisions we make on a daily, even moment-by-moment basis, are leading us somewhere.
It is said nowadays that failure happens on the way to success. But this is only true when we learn that our failures show us what not to do in the future. If we keep walking down the same road, how can we expect a different result?
Once you know that your steps are going the wrong way, you mightn’t know what to do—but you definitely know what not to do. You then choose to try something different, to go another way.
The fact that many of us seem to have a working failure model we never stray from has very little to do with our intelligence. We’re often not bringing our intelligence into play at all! Why do we keep compounding our less-than-successful actions with even more of the same ilk, choosing activities that are of no help to us or our dearest wishes? Because it’s easier. It’s part of our comfort zone. It’s mindlessly following a well trodden path. But it’s not the path that in our hearts we want to take. We all want to feel that we can be successful in some way.
I call it the failure model because to my mind that makes it sound more like something that can be trialled and changed. We do not need to see ourselves as slaves to our past habits and ways.
If the way we respond to our partner in difficult moments does not have the kind of resolution we would like, why do we keep reacting in the same way and saying the same things? If the food we eat makes us fat and unheallthy, why don’t we simply make a few changes and then never go back to the old way?
The way I try to see it these days is that what I am doing in this moment, of itself, will not make me fail or succeed. It is just one tiny action. But our whole lives are made up of moments, of tiny actions, and it is the decisions we make during those moments—this moment—that governs our eventual destination. So the perverse enjoyment we get from snapping back at our partner is shortlived and sends us down the wrong path. Maybe one icecream won’t hurt, but if it’s one icecream on the hour, every hour, it leads us down a very rocky road. Little actions, performed consistently over time, can have amazing results. And whether the result is good or bad depends on the quality of that one little action carried out over and over again.
Each step is leading somewhere. If we can remember that, and make a more considered choice in even the small actions that make up the minutiae of our day, we can indeed use the failure model as a stepping stone to success.