♦Success is a peak we all venture towards. In hope, we trudge on. We spiral downwards when we fall, fail, or falter. We are devastated as we watch our careful plans shatter, our confidence fade and we are enveloped with disappointment. This is not our destination. Like the proverbial righteous man, we may fall, but we can rise up again.
From my many falls, I have learnt valuable lessons on how to rise up again. When you find yourself on the ground after a fall, the key to climbing out or getting up isn’t always about waiting for a rescue or wishing the ground would suddenly be level again for your rising to occur. The key is hinged to t he next right thing you do.
Success is not defined by the absence of falls, but it is always attained by the courage to rise after falls. It is about a conscious, often difficult, shift of your mind from dwelling on the problem to chasing the solution. This is where true resilience is forged and this is how the next right thing is found. Whether hard or easy, choosing the next right thing makes you solution-driven and has tremendous effect on you and how things turn out.
Failure can make you feel powerless. Focusing on solutions, no matter how small, instantly shifts your mindset from a victim to an architect. You begin to ask yourself the relevant questions like ‘What can I do now?’ This is how you discover the step to take — a phone call, new idea or identifying what was wrong that can be fixed.
Falls and failures overwhelms us and can often daze us. Identifying the very next step, the single, actionable solution you can implement right now, can help you see things from a new perspective. Momentum, however small or slow, is antidote to stagnation.
Every time you identify a solution and act on it, however imperfectly, you prove to yourself that you are capable. You rebuild the self-trust in yourself that was eroded by the fall.
Solutions are magnets for opportunity. Taking concrete action opens doors, sparks ideas, and attracts help that the inertia of a fall limits. My mentor once told me, “When you do the next right thing, the next one will present itself.” It is a chain of activities that will lead you right up.
Ado Erhirhi
BUSINESS SENSE LTD… human capital development for enterprise success.
