Written by: Mona AlHebsi, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Most of us have dreams, aspirations, or, call them, goals which we look forward to and work towards to live a good life. Often, once we know what we want to achieve in life and set intentions, we write those goals, and then we embark on an exciting, sometimes difficult learning path to execute our goals and turn them into reality.
We start any new endeavor filled with loads of energy and a lot of excitement, and we give our very best efforts to reach those goals. We continue with this energy and mindset until we hit a wall, fall into a trap, or get abandoned by circumstances or people, which are all, by the way, different forms of “failing” that is an integral part of any worthwhile thing we do in life. The problem starts when we interpret these “temporary hurdles” or “lessons learned” as a permanent failure and then want to give up. Instead, we should consider failure as success in progress and understand that every time we fail for any reason, we actually get one step closer to achieving our dreams or goals.
I discussed the importance of “Celebrating Your Mistakes” in chapter 4 of my book Beat The Odds, where I highlighted the many benefits of failing fast and utilizing your failures as mediums to refuel your energy and keep going on but this time with more experience and maturity because failure is not an opposite success, it’s a natural part of success. To succeed, you need to fail first and there is nothing embarrassing or discouraging about it. All humans fail at some point in their journey and failure is inevitable especially when you do new things for the first time.
Another way of looking at this is being aware of a universal law called: “The Law of Wasted Efforts”, which means that many times during a pursuit of a goal, we go through a series of mistakes, wrong judgments, and lapses that lead to failure in reaching the set goal, and henceforth we get discouraged and feel that we have wasted time, efforts, and resources in the meaningless endeavor. Well, not quite. Nothing is really wasted. All the efforts, time, and resources you think you wasted actually get accumulated into a reservoir called “experience” that will, with time. It still becomes the most valuable asset you possess that you can cash later on in life.
Scientists actually found that all other creatures like animals, trees, and other forces of nature are more aware and receptive to this “Law of Wasted Efforts” compared to humans. For example, lions only succeed in a quarter of their hunting attempts-which means they fail 75%- but they still go on not because of fear of hunger, but rather because this law is built in their instinct. In the same way, half of the fish are eaten, most of the world’s rainfall is in oceans, and most of the seeds of trees are eaten by birds, still, all these creatures continue their efforts and cycles in nature without getting disappointed losing hope. Only human beings think facing failures and not being able to succeed in the first few attempts qualify them to be annoyed and give up. The moral of the story is that real failure really is to stop trying time and time again until one day, we achieve the desired success.
Your perseverance to get up and carry on regardless of the current circumstances and outcomes testify how determined you are toward your goals and how responsible you are towards your life. Still, there are occasions in life when you feel you are tired, you did everything possible, but you don’t see results yet, you wonder why you are not rewarded for your dedication and good work, for being committed and very nice to others and they seem to lose hope and become desperate. Then you start hearing things like “it’s not the right time” or “there is a divine timing for everything” or “your time hasn’t come yet, baby”, all trying to tell you about the same thing in different ways.
I chose the title “Fill Time Until The Right Time” for a reason. “Filling Time” here means to stick around and anticipate the rewards of your hard work, patience, and dedication with great faith after you have exerted your best efforts. You need to believe in the concept that justice is working in the background, and everyone will get the rewards or punishments for their deeds. In other words, as you sow shall you reap.
There is always a “right” or “divine” timing for everything, whether you like it or not. Just know that we are not floating in a haphazard universe; on the contrary, everything is very well structured and planned to the smallest details that we sometimes are unaware of or take for granted. Especially the “give and take” component, wherein everyone gets paid accurately for their deeds. Deeds here are not only the physical efforts we do, but our deeds also include everything like our thoughts, emotions, judgments, intentions, in addition to our physical actions. That’s why I said earlier everything is counted in the smallest bits.
What I mean, when things are not manifesting or actualizing in your life regardless of your great efforts, please do take a pause and reflect on why this might be the case. There could be many reasons that determine the “right timing” element such as great actions taken towards the goal but inside, you have feelings or thoughts of fear or unworthiness that are creating the obstacles for you. Or it could be that you have all that it takes to get a certain job or promotion, but your intentions are not right, clear or contradicting, etc. In other words, the “inside” doesn’t match the “outside”, that’s why you don’t see the fruit of your work in reality. You need to synchronize your inner world i.e., thoughts, emotions, intentions, faith, with your outer world i.e., physical efforts and actions towards the goal to avoid sending mixed messages to the universe and thus improve the chances of your dreams and goals to manifest and become a physical reality.
I’m quite certain there were many such occasions in your life where you have prayed for certain things desperately and worked towards them but never got them at all or perhaps got them later in your life. You will only realize this and understand the wisdom of not always getting what you wished and worked for the most in your prescribed timing later in your life when you are wiser and can see your life in a big scheme of things.
To conclude, success, in a nutshell, is all about exerting your best efforts while maintaining the faith that you will reach your desired destination one fine day. When you have faith in God, you don’t have to worry about the future. You just know it’s all in his hands. You just go and do your best. Failure is nothing but a messenger that invites us to start again, this time more vigorously and intelligently.
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Mona AlHebsi, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Mona AlHebsi, is an Award-Winning Hotelier, HR Practitioner, Success Coach, Renowned Author, and Speaker. She has recently been named “Most Influential Woman in Hospitality Human Capital” and "Inspirational Female Leader" due to her eminent contributions to the hospitality industry and Human Resources profession.
Through her book “Beat The Odds,” Mona aims to provide a roadmap to all hoteliers and working professionals on how to make their work a vehicle to delivering excellence and achieving astounding success. She instinctively knows how to ignite the courage in others to stay true to their values and capitalize on their strengths, which will ultimately steer them towards success and fulfillment. Mona's life mantra is "The more odds you beat, the greater will be your feat!"
