Failure, success and life

Earlier this month I took on the National Blog Posting Month challenge of writing a blog each day. I started out well, writing daily, full of ideas on what I could post and then life got in the way.

Committing to the time to write was always the challenge. I could have written less words, written blogs that were not quite up to scratch or wrote them less frequently.

In the end, I have reverted back to blogging weekly / fortnightly. Surprisingly though I am not beating myself up about it. Why?

I am reminded of Coco Chanel’s words, ‘Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door’

Perhaps it wasn’t important in the first place. Perhaps the motivation was not high enough. Perhaps I was not committed enough. Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations. Perhaps I ‘gave up’ too easily. Perhaps…?

Others things that have been going on, took precedence such as our Buy Local Fair. This was a new event that took more than 6 months of planning and an immense amount of time and effort in getting it off the ground.

The aim of the Buy Local Fair was to encourage local people to buy more locally. The more money that stays locally, the more our shops, businesses and community thrive. We are passionate about our town remaining and retaining its distinctive charm and vibrancy and not some homogenised, clone town where high street looks like every other high street.  

Our local King’s Hall and Winter Gardens was transformed into a bustling market place as businesses promoted and sold their products and services.

Alongside this, were activities to keep children entertained such as making bookmarks, icing biscuits and several magic shows ran through the day. It was a family event.

The highlights were the food demonstrations such as Michael Vanheste from the award winning Bettys Cookery School cooking up a Swiss Breakfast Rösti with grilled dry-cured bacon, autumn mushrooms and a poached egg. 

And Michelin star food from The Box Tree Restaurant matched with award winning craft beers from Ilkley Brewery such as beetroot macaroons filed with goats cheese mousse and Chipotle Chocolate Stout.

That pretty much sums up my stance on life – some you lose, some you win. But if you don’t try, you will never know.

And the learning?  As a learning and development specialist,there is always learning.

1. You can’t do everything, be realistic with your time

2. Failure – better to try and fail than not try at all. Learn and moved on

3. Success – comes from hard work and is made easier when the work is shared. I now have 3 extra friends!  

4. Face to face engagement and relationships trumps over virtual ones

5. Put things into perspective and see the whole context

Heed the words of Winton Churchill, ‘Success is tumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm’ … what shall I do next…hmmm

How do you deal with failure? What strategies have helped?