Reading the Failure Book I’ve got aware that there is one central theme called: Responsibility.
If we’re resisting learning anything new, if we’re promising things we have no intention of doing, if it’s always someone else’s fault, or if the truth is in the mind of the beholder, in each and every of these mentioned cases, we’re not willing to take responsibility for our own life.
What, in fact, doesn’t change anything – the only one who is responsible for what ever occurs in my life – is ME, if I like it or not. It’s never, and it never was, my parents, my older brother, not my teacher or my spouse. But it’s so easy and comfortable to put the blame on them.
Is it my fault, that my marriage was bound to go wrong? Sorry – yes it is. And that’s ok. Ahead of being able to take responsibility there is accepting. If there is no way to go on together, we’ll have to face the truth and take responsibility for our solutions. How ever they might be.
This book is including a wonderful secret, and the authors don’t keep it, they are giving it to us (thanks a lot): Every fault is a new possibility; nobody will condemn us, if we fail. They will pay us tribute, respect and regard when we’re able to accept us the way we are.
Reading some of the stories I started to think about how the authors came to know me so well. I don’t know Phil at all – but – he knows that my little girl once wanted to have a horse. It was my part to tell her, that I’m not able to buy a horse. We all have to deal with disappointment, more ore less, sooner or later; life is not always up there; sometimes it is down here. But we are only growing from challenges.
And this guy, Terry, how come that he knows that I was afraid of coloured people? It’s not Terry and it’s not me – we’re all afraid of differences, people not being the way we are. Different in thinking, looking and behaving. This should be a challenge, being curious about getting closer to them; listening to them. What we will discover: they are just the same than we are, there is absolutely no difference.
We are one – if we believe it or not.