How Failure Works

As a human, like all of us. We inevitable all have come across failures. So what is this thing called 'failure'? How does it occur? What are it's impacts? And how to overcome it?

How it occurs
I believe failure is a feeling that comes from being unable to achieve one's expectations. These expectations can be set by others (ie. exam passing score), or it can be set by our selves (ie. personal weight reduction goal). However, for us to feel failure, we must have agreed to this benchmark and have reasonable confidence in ourselves. Why I say this is because, if for example:

• Phillip always gets a F grade for his exams - but even though it's a failing grade from the teacher's point of view. If he doesn't have an expectation to get a high grade (ie. didn't agree to the benchmark of getter better than F grade), then he would be less likely to feel failure - since it's an expected result.

It's impacts

There are big failures and there are small ones. It could range from failing to buy eggs at the supermarket, to losing massive amounts on a stock that's expected to rise. These degrees of failures are self defined, and based on how important it is to the person - the severity of the impact will also vary.

Impacts of failure may include: demotivation; depression; loss of confidence; lost in a state of confusion and not knowing what to do; fear and refraining from doing such tasks again; self criticism; unable to stand up again;

How to overcome
I believe there are different ways to overcome failure with each person having their own unique way. What I'll talk about will be what I think is the general way of overcoming failure.

1. Don't give up - have you heard the saying "I may have lost this battle, but I haven't lost the war". We can't just sink into a state of depression after one 'lost battle', because we have to live and prepare in order to win the next 'battle'.
2. See failure as a 'stepping stone to success' - lets take 'baby learning to walk' example. If the baby is so afraid to fall that it never tries to walk, then it can only craw; while other babies might fall a few times in the process of learning to walk, but they will eventually be able to walk, and be better than the baby that can only craw. (NB: I have to note here that it doesn't mean the more times one fails the more closer to success that person is. That person has to learn from the failure and improve.)
3. Any more ideas? Leave your comments.

Notes
If someone doesn't have high expectations, they will likely meet less failures - since their goals are easier to achieve. But to be someone better than others, one must have high expectations of themselves. So they will no doubt encounter countless failures, and must stand up, learn from it and continue onward to become the top.

The Way of "Discipline"

Just changed the blog layout, let me know if you like it. :D

From the last blog:

Discipline: being able to do something that is planned, while having strong temptations and distractions.

After understading what 'Discipline' means, I decided it's now time to try it out and to study it deeper. One aspect of self discipline I've been working on is trying to discipline myself to sleep and get up on time. While that may sound easy to you, but for someone not as disciplined as yourself - I usually found the many excuse including, but not limited to: "having to finish something off, it's almost done"; "I'm not sleepy, can still do some more work"; "need this done, don't have time tomorrow" to sleep late. And ofcourse, since I slept late, I couldn't get up as early as I wanted to (else, I'll be a walking zombie - "brains, must have brains, muahahaha" hope I didn't scare you there. :P)

Just from the sleeping example above, I believe that to be disciplined on something - we must not find excuses for ourselves. To be disciplined, we have to do what is planned. And not change the plan with excuses all the time.

Here, I started thinking about planing. To do what is planned, one would in one form or another need a plan. And in this plan, it should list out why we have to do what the plan suggests (i.e. the justification), what are the benefits, and what are the losses if we don't do it. I'm sure you would of thought of the benefits and losses beforehand, and by writing it down, I'm hopping it will help us concrete it, and to think deeper about it.

Now for those smart people - you might have picked up that "benefits" and "losses" happen only if we are working towards something. Lets call that a "goal". Believe it or not, everyone has goals - a business's goal could be to earn more money; a employee's goal could be to not get fired; a husband's goal could be to please his family and make sure there is enought money; a wife's goal could be to make sure the hansband and the kids are happy; a child's goal could be to get that $100 action figure of BoBo Man; so on and so on.

Let take my sleeping case to further clarify. My goal would be "to get healthier". And because I know sleeping on time and having enough sleep contribute to better health, so I plan to do it. For if I don't I'll be tired the next day and my health would suffer.

Coming back to "goals". So why would we want to set goals. Obviously there's a "motivation". And we would need this motivation all the way through our plan to make sure we stay focused. If this motivation / desire is that very strong then we will deviate easily.

For the sleeping case, I want "to get healthier" so that I have more energy to do things, I can think better, I have longer life span, ... the list goes on.

I believe the dependency goes like this:

Discipline -> Plan (inc. Pros v Cons) -> Goal -> Motivation / Desire

Discipline, Determination, Daring - Discipline

Follow the way of the Ninja!

I remember I first learnt these three terms while reading my Japanese Text Book in high school. It talks of ancient japanses ninjas, how cool they were and all the things they could do. But like every person, the nijas didn't achieve all their skills with out hardship.

Discipline, Determination, and Daring, were the three mottos the ninjas followed - described the book. I believe if, just by applying these three mottos everyday could make the ninjas such a powerful force in Japan, then we will too be successful by applying it ourselves.

Discipline

Ever had the experience of turning on your computer wanting to do home work, but ending up surfing the net? Or setting a plan for the next day only to find yourself completely off plan. Well I'm ashamed to admit, I have. And that is precisely an example of being NOT disciplined.

I believe discipline stands for the ability to carry out certain tasks that has been decided even though one might not want to, or has a stronger preference of doing something else. Say 'study' for example - most people would prefer to play over study, so one is disciplined if they ignore the temptation to play and study instead.

Discipline: being able to do something that is planned, while having strong temptations and distractions.

Will talk about Determination and Daring in the following posts.

ps: found a cool ninja book while searching online: http://www.scribd.com/doc/14443004/Martial-Arts-Secrets-of-the-Ninja

Urge to improve, motivations for goal setting

As you might have experienced, many of us during one stage of our lifes or another finds the need to set new goals. Like me for example - lately I found I haven't really had any significant achievements. My everyday life consists of waking up, going to work, coming back late, have dinner, surf the net and go to sleep. Sounds so ordinary does it? I know, it's completely different to when I was in uni doing full time work, full time / overloaded studies.

As I recall back to a typical uni day, I would at least have to learn one new chapter on Artificial Intelligence, finish off a tic tac toe game, or to prepare for an algorithm exam the next day. Where as at work, I do the same things day in day out, occasionally learning a few things if I'm lucky. I can just feel how slow I'm progressing...

Just like how Khalil Gibran described in his poem about work (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/work-chapter-vii/):

"Life if darkness saved by urge...."

I have the urge to improve, I want to be better than others. And I know to be better than others will be more demanding, and means I can't just follow the crowd. Dad, Mum and Aunt has helped me half way, now I have to tile the other half for it to be complete.

To do that, I must have GOALS so as to know which direction to head in. Discipline to not deviate from the direction, Determination to keep moving towards the goal and Daringness to make it to the goal in shorter amounts of time.

Learnt alot, Met alot, Tired alot

Following my previous post - yes, I went to the CEO sleepout.

The event was entertaining, interesting, knowledgeable and full of admirable people.

Thursday 6pm at Luna Park was the registeration. Here you can see a 'bed' cover in newspaper - attempting to portray the idea of sleeping out:

There were also a small gallery of art by homeless people when they were asked to describe what a day in their life is like (they were really sad art I must say) :

At 7pm we had a warm reception by Mike Bailey (you can find more about him here) and organisers for this event:

Dinner was then served. We had soup and bread, personally it wasn't very filling - but homeless people might have even less than this, so I'm not to complain.

To make the event rich, after the light meal, we started discussing the issue of homelessness, what it's like being homeless and how St Vincent de Paul Society have been helping the homeless.

One of my most admired person was there too! A man that needs no introduction - Dick Smith the entrepreneur himself. :D

After the presentation, when it was social time, I got to speak to Dick Smith. If I had to sumarise his personality in a few phrases, he is: Interesting, Kind, Knowledgeable and Modest. Just being around him fascinating. He would talk about his many pranks (i.e: Iceberg prank), to his near death balloon advertures, to his encounters with the government.

What a person! I want to be just like him if not better. :D

Soon, it was 11pm and came time for us to go to bed. Luckily it was raining, so instead of sleeping out in the open, most of us found a spot in the 'bumper cars' ride area of Luna Park. The ground was cold and hard, my gratitude goes to the people who provided us with these clean thin pieces of cardboard to sleep on. No matresses were allowed, so most only had sleeping bag and pillow.

Did I manage to sleep at night you ask? Not a single bit. The ground is hard, it was freezing, and in addition, at 2am in the morning, a particular someone was causing so much racket, and purposely trying to wake everyone up. It made me think: being homeless is not just about having no where to stay, it's also about having to deal and put up with all kinds of different people whether they like it or not.

You don't know how happy I was to sleep in my matress bed the next evening. It made me understand "appreciation" at a deeper level. For it is only when we don't have something that we learn how valuable everyday things we take for grant are. So why not appreciate it while we have it. :)

CEO Sleep Out

Have you ever wondered what it's like to sleep out in the open on a cold winter evening? Well I'm about to find out.

CEO Sleep Out is an event created to raise awareness, raise to the challenge of the homelessness and to raise funding for "The St Vincent de Paul Society".

On Thursday 18th of June, hundreds and thousands of people will be sleeping out in the open, in their sleeping bag, on pieces of cardboard at Luna Park, with cold freezing sea breeze brushing against their face.

Please support this daring director and "The St Vincent de Paul Society" with donations via:

http://www.ceosleepout.org.au/