How to fail well

How to fail well
Learning and growing through life’s setbacks and sorrows  

During our endeavors in life, be they for outer success in wealth and worldly acquisitions, or inner success in wisdom and spiritual realizations, we all will, sooner or later, face failure. Those failures don’t hurt us as much as our reactions to them. Learning how to fail well is among life’s most important life-skills.  

Not taking failure personally:   

Gita wisdom equips us with a profound yet practical understanding of causation by which we can analyze failure more objectively. Thus, we can introspect how best to let go – whether detachment is a shield that promotes recovery or an excuse that justifies irresponsibility.  

Forgiving those who caused our failures  

When we feel someone has, unintentionally or intentionally, caused our failure, resentfulness or even revengefulness can keep us locked in the past. Forgiving them can free us from such emotions, but won’t it make us vulnerable to their similar future actions? Gita wisdom explains what forgiving implies and what it doesn’t.  

Forgiving ourselves for our failures  

When we feel we caused our failures, we naturally feel guilty. Though guilt can sometimes protect us from self-destructive actions, guilt itself can sometimes become a self-destructive emotion – by not forgiving ourselves, we may become our own worst enemies. When Gita wisdom informs our conscience, we learn when to be hard on ourselves and when gentle.  

Focusing on the Divine Purpose that never fails  

No matter how many or how terrible our failures, a divine purpose always awaits us, calling us forward and upward. Gita wisdom reveals a loving divinity, Krishna, who exists in our heart, not to catch us when we do wrong, but to catch us when we fall. His kripa towers above our (or anyone else’s) karma – by developing a personal relationship with him, we get aboard a ship that no storm can sink, a ship that can take us to a success beyond failure.  

Teacher: Chaitanya Charan