Failure is essential to your Success

You will fail at some point in your life. You will lose, you will lose all. So what? Accept it ! You will embarrass yourself, You will suck at something. There is no doubt about it, I’m telling you. I have no doubt that you will fail. Embrace it for it is inevitable. I should know; I fail all the time. I remember giving up and running away once. I hide because I failed in my first business, second business. third business and eventually seventeen of them.

I feel embarrassed facing my friends, my family, in fact, anyone! I lost my money. I lost my car. I lost my house. I even lost my wife. I had nothing and owe everyone everything. 

I do however noticed a constant in all the failures and errors that i had over the years. The constant is me. In my early years, I justified my failures by explaining about the situation and how i ended up in that state to every possible pair of ears i can get my time on. This step was something that made me feel better and surely I did, but for a while. After a cycle, i made the same mistake again. This time, I was less affected but still sought the comfort of justifying myself by explaining the situation to my friends. Slowly i realised, that i am only pushing my responsibility away, while getting their sympathy through my sharing. I am in a state where I genuinely believe that i am not my fault! The result is that I did not made adjustments to my view, my choices and myself. I stayed where I am. This leading naturally to me repeating the same mistake again should the same situation appears again.

This awareness suddenly jumped started my change. This awareness got me worried that if i continue to take the approach of explaining when I have failed, I will NEVER progress! That feeling, was the driving force that helped me change my pattern of behaviour. From "Making Mistake ~ Feel Shit ~ Justify My error" to "Make Mistakes ~ What should i change to avoid this in the future".

Every failure was and is an opportunity for me to identify a bad choice or a bad assessment. This time round, before I open my mouth to speak to anyone on it, I have already identified my issues and made conscious effort to change it. It is not easy, and there are times that i repeated my mistakes multiple times. But I didn’t quit, I didn’t fall back nor give up.

I went on to start the next company and the next company and the next company. I prayed and prayed and prayed, I continue to fail and to fail and to fail and eventually in my 2014 bankruptcy, I had to windup seventeen companies. Since then, things have changed a lot and so have I. The objectives and values I live by now are also completely different from the past. Now I press on relentlessly and faithfully in all that I plan to achieve. . . but this time armed with knowledge of failures from the past and a sense of peace & joy. I no longer seek moments of happiness at the expense of my life. I no longer think that the world revolves around me! 😂

( was speaking to my team. ) "Kids, I know you have the courage to be fierce, strong, courageous and determined to earn, to fight, to build, to seek new ways. . . but do you have the guts to fail? Fail and still continue to pursue the path. The path of exercising your mind to excel in your work? Because if you do and still continue to improve on what you practice; . . . . . . . .one day, you will be someone! I have been there, so can you.

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Your brother in crime, in Christ, in recovery,

Matthew Poh

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