Change your Narrative
“Failure is an event, not a person.” - Zig Ziglar
A few years ago, I purchased a shirt to support a friend’s organization, and this quote was across the front. Maybe you have seen the quote. Perhaps you have had to actively process and work at accepting that you are not a failure.
We all, at times, allow the voice in our head to speak lies into existence.
We all have failure moments—the point where good intentions and poor decisions or execution meet. The difference between success and failure is what we do after the crossing point. Failure is in the past. However, failure events can perpetuate if we allow the voice in our head to dominate our decisions and execution. When we allow the voice in our head to speak lies, we allow failure to masquerade ourselves into the future. We allow the failure to define us.
Failure is not a person, and a person is not a failure. Our past does not define our future. Likewise, our past failures do not define us. I had had moments when I failed. At times in my life, I questioned whether I could have success. Other times I have even wondered what success was.
When I had the chance to sit down and have an authentic conversation with Erik Allen on my Impact Driven Leader podcast, I knew bits and pieces of his past. I knew his past did not define him. He didn’t roll up to our first meeting a few years ago with a semi-truck worth of baggage; his failures. (p.s. we all have SEMI-TRUCKS worth of failure)
The most significant opportunity you and I have is not to let our past mistakes - failures- define what we can do today or tomorrow. When we accept responsibility and learn, we are armed with the wisdom to help someone else. When we help someone else, we have risen from our failures and used the failure as a learning event, not who we are.
Our past failures do not hinder our ability to serve others. Instead, our past failures can propel us to make an impact when we use the voice of resilience to drive us rather than the voice of lies defining us.
We all are the narrators of our stories, and we have the opportunity to encourage others to write their own stories
