The 'F' Word

The 'F' word

There are few words that illicit a bigger gasp on its utterance.

However, before you send the censorship board to have me banned, hear me out.

I'm not talking about the Gordon Ramsay style of expletives, just an ordinary word that people find hard to say. And hear.

Failure.

It strikes everyone at some stage of life, and most likely more than once. And yet, so many anxieties are caused over the fear of facing failure. Myself included.

I'm not sure if it makes me a people-pleaser, or that my twenty years of administration experience just can't allow for the inefficiency of not getting it right the first time. Whatever the psychological reason, I have an aversion to failing.

So on a particular day when I was dwelling in my own inadequacies, I turned to social media for a welcome distraction only to be faced with a link to a motivational video from Oprah Winfrey. On, you guessed it, failure.

Rolling my eyes as I tried to scroll past the video, the subtitles grabbed my attention. 'There are no mistakes.'
Seriously? I just made several colossal ones. I know you are a multi-billionaire, but I am evidence of a challenge to your theory. But I kept watching.

'Failure is just that thing moving you in another direction. You get as much from your losses as you do from your victories. Your losses are there to wake you up. Your life is bigger than one experience.'

That's ok for her; she's uber successful and one of, if not the, richest women in the world.

Except I remembered that she was fired from her very first TV journalist anchor position. In that moment of her demise she was demoted to, you guessed it, a talk show host. This perceived 'failure' catapulted her into one of the most successful media personalities in the world.

The mind boggles (well, mine does) as to the course of history if Oprah hadn't experienced that 'failure'. That difficult, demoralising, humiliating time in her life was the very thing that pointed her toward her destiny.

Excuse me, people - there will be no more lamenting tonight. I have a destiny to chase.