planning

Planning is vital to success

If you’re anticipating going to school, what are your goals? I now ask my students during each initial meeting of the semester, what do you want to be when you grow up? If you could get paid to do anything you wanted to do, would you still study what you’re now planning on studying? Are you only going to college for the potential to earn a lot of money? I wish I would have been asked those questions as I began college in 1988.

What would you want to be known for?

While in the parking lot after class earlier in the week, I had a student ask me a question I wasn’t expecting. Normally there are students who want to ask my opinion about religion, their grades, problems in other classes, and at times, about life. He was asking about what he should do with his future. Taking a cue from a film we watched in class, I asked him, “once you’ree gone, what would you want to be known for?” We began to talk about the things he enjoys doing and the, jobs he’s had in the past. I asked him if someone were to write his obituary, what three things would he want to be remembered for? After a few awkward minutes, he looked at me and told me he had to think about it.

Again, I wish I had been asked this question early in life. The 18-year old me never thought about anything existing beyond tomorrow. I didn’t have a plan. Furthermore, I was unprepared for the responsibilities of adulthood. If someone had asked me that question in 1988, I may not have been able to give an answer. At least, the question would have given me something to think about. It would have taken me beyond my own perceptions of myself and the world around me.

“Failure is always an option…”

One of my favorite television shows was Mythbusters. Adam Savage, one of the show’s creators and co-stars, had a saying that has become an unofficial anthem for me: “failure is always an option!” One thing the 2016 election has taught me is there is a whole generation of people who do not know how to handle failure. Often referred to as “the snowflake generation”, these are young people who came into adulthood in the first decade of the Twenty-first Century. [4] And in the college/university courses I teach, I notice many of them cannot handle it when they fail – even if they have not completed the required work for the course! One very important lesson Generation X forgot to pass on – failure. Never underestimate the power of failure to teach lessons we could not otherwise learn.

Failure is not an ending…

At the time I joined the Army in 1988, I was pretty sure life as I knew it was ending. Failing out of college wasn’t completely unexpected. But what I’ve learned is that it was that failure that changed the course of my life. When I arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia, I came to realize my failure in college didn’t define who I was. It was actually a product of what I had become. It also became a powerful learning tool. Each semester I share my first attempt at college with my new students for one main reason – to teach them failure is not life-ending. Failure is life-redefining. It gives us a chance to evaluate what happened, where we made our mistakes, and what we can do to improve ourselves.

Sometimes we spend time planning what we are going to do next and we forget to even consider the possibility of failure. In my own life, I have learned to evaluate myself. Now, I question why I want to do something. Then there’ the companion questions I ask:  is it really that important for me to do? What do I risk if it doesn’t work out? What can I gain out of it? It is not that I am afraid of failure, it is that I want to waste time on something that does not have any value in either success or failure.

Failure is simply a way of rebooting life’s goals…

In my own life the failures I experienced have been many. I’ve had two failed marriages and with my older children, as a parent I failed, too. I was medically discharged from the U.S. Army in 1996 – which was also a type of failure. I’ve tried teaching in public school and now I am teaching college and have been since 2004. Each time I’ve experienced failure I have learned what didn’t work for me. I also learned new skills and developed new talents each time I’ve tried something new. Not only does failure serve to redirect our focus, but failure can also bring new opportunities to what would have otherwise been a dead-end. Something else I have learned about failure – how we handle failure predicts how we will handle success.

Failure does something else for us. It contributes to our character. It helps us understand how to best encourage others who we see struggling around us. Failure helps us become gracious in our successes.

Nobody spends time planning to fail. However, failing to plan will certainly lead to failure.

Footnotes
[1]“Greatest Generation – Wikipedia.”
[2]“Baby Boomers – Wikipedia.”
[3]“Generation X – Wikipedia.”
[4]“Generation Snowflake – Wikipedia.”

References cited:

“Baby Boomers – Wikipedia.” Wikipedia. Accessed April 7, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers.
“Generation Snowflake – Wikipedia.” Wikipedia. Accessed April 7, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Snowflake.
“Generation X – Wikipedia.” Wikipedia. Accessed April 7, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X.
“Greatest Generation – Wikipedia.” Wikipedia. Accessed April 7, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Generation.

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