Achieving Success Through Failure

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound reinvention.  ~Conan O'Brien

It's All Good

Clients often lament that their career has been choppy or contains positions they wish they'd never taken, or that they weren't in for very long, or that they had a boss at the last place with whom they did not get along, or other work/job/career things they think didn't unfold the right way.

But from what I've observed it's a truth—for all of us—that all of the experiences we have had in our careers have served us well, every one of them, just maybe it doesn't exactly look that way at first glance.

One pattern I've found in careers is that, every job we hold gives us some sort of a "gift". Sometimes people look back and see that if they hadn't held That job, or worked at That company, or with That person, they wouldn't have learned a certain skill or bit of information or had an experience that, it turns out, became important to rest of their career.

And hand-in-hand with that idea is this: sometimes people get let go from positions quite suddenly, big surprise/shock. But often, down the road, they can see that they'd gotten that bit of information, skill or experience from that company, or job, and it truly had been time to move on. They didn't realize that consciously, and they hadn't thought they were ready to make a change, but over time they saw how neatly their past opened up into their future.

There's a saying that when one door closes, another opens. And if you can trust that, and believe another old saying which is that 'The Best Is Yet To Come'.... well... then it's all good.