If anything can go wrong, it will,’ the infamous Murphy’s law states. When issues inevitably crop up, what attitude do we adopt towards them? Do we break down and give up, or do we leverage them as opportunities for growth and progress?
The fact is that failure is far more common than success. For some people, a loss means the end of the world—it affects their mental health. But what distinguishes successful people from unsuccessful ones is their capacity to handle the loss and deal with disappointment. The increase in suicides, alcoholism, and nervous breakdowns in modern times is proof that people have not learnt to deal with failure. Hence, if we wish to succeed, we should train for losses. So how can anyone go about this?
The Biggest Problem in Facing Problems
A man got down from his car parked on the curbside, to fix the punctured tyre. While he was replacing it with a spare one, his five-year-old son sitting in the car, feeling miserable about the situation, complained, ‘Dad, why does this have to happen to us?’
‘This is life, son,’ replied his dad. ‘This is not a TV show that we can switch the channel every time we do not like the programme.’
The biggest problem in facing problems is the negativity we start harbouring within ourselves. When we remove that impediment of negativity from within, we refuse to be defeated and successfully persist when problems besiege us.
Challenges are inevitable in life. While we tend to focus on the discomfort or disruption that challenges create in our lives, every setback or obstacle actually catalyses learning and opens doors to our higher self. A gem gets polished with friction. The finest steel is produced by putting it in the fire. Similarly, the more hardships we face, the stronger we become. Just as a carpenter uses sandpaper to smoothen rough edges, the Universe provides us with hardships that will compel us to progress. If we choose to be positive, the problems that come to bury us can be utilised to benefit and lift us up! As Franklin D Roosevelt said: ‘A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.’
Failures are Never Permanent if You Don’t Miss the Learning
Successful people also experience failure as often as unsuccessful people do. The difference is that they utilise their experiences for internal advancement. For example, Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist in modern history had a school teacher report with comments, ‘He will never amount to anything.’
As the saying goes, “Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” To err is not a catastrophe unless we refuse to learn from it. In the journey to success, we will naturally meet with failure as well. The reason is that we are all worse before we get better. If we replace lamenting with a count of lessons learnt and gratitude for them, it will enable us to grow through—not just go through—any challenges that arise.
The only way to avoid failures is to stand still in life or live in a cocoon. Then we will be free from pain alongside missing out on joy and success too.
Championing a Higher Cause in Life
One of the recent Padma Shri awardees, Harekala Hajabba, never had the privilege of formal school education due to abject poverty in his village. Earning `150 a day by selling fruits, when one day a foreign tourist asked for the price of oranges, Harekala was embarrassed for not being able to comprehend English. An acute realisation of the importance of education dawned upon him. This eventually propelled him to invest all his life savings to start a school on one acre of land, so that the children in his village never suffer the same fate. A labour of love, the school now educates 175 students with classes up till 10th grade.
Adversities also act as a course corrector, to remind us of the higher purpose of life and turn us towards that. When people have a higher purpose, they do not mind tolerating the pain that enables them to achieve it. Athletes and sportsmen push themselves to practice severe austerities because they feel it could help them win the medal.
Like a muscle that atrophies without use, mental strength fades unless it is tested. When we do not have the ability or power to control setbacks, we need to believe that challenges teach us things that we would not have learned otherwise.
The Bhagavad Gita explains that we have only one mind. We can either brood over miseries and sources of fear or be solution-oriented and exert ourselves emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually to develop sublime qualities like, wisdom, perseverance, patience, tolerance, resilience, humility, etc—that are required for a successful life. Without challenges in life, how will we be motivated in life to develop these noble virtues?
Swami Mukundananda is the founder of JKYog India and a bestselling author. He will give live discourses on ‘Life Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita’ in Bengaluru at Chowdiah Memorial Hall on December 10 and Purandara Bhavana on December 11 and 12.