Failure Seminar 101

Recovering from Failure

When it rains, it pours! I think it was Sam Adeyemi who said it would be nice if we could have failure seminars- where rather than the larger than life personalities that facilitate success seminars, we have failures facilitate sessions in which they give us 10 steps so as not to end up like them. Well, we don’t have failure seminars (it won’t sell anyway) and typically people who fail are so busy hiding their failures that they don’t have time to pass on the lessons.

I just might be able to give that failure seminar- having suffered recently from quite a string of failures: In no particular order- I was sacked, TWICE! (More if I go further in time, but let’s not dig too far, ok? Of course it'ss not as nasty as it sounds-first time I was asked to resign, second time I was rationalized), then I dropped out of a PhD. Program where I had full scholarship (that’s also a nice way of putting it), then I had a series of miscarriages, a struggling business…Let’s just say I was failing on a grand scale!  I started to doubt myself-and the failures increased. Add to that the shame of the whole thing- boy was I ashamed! I couldn’t even explain why I felt such shame but I did despite my bold and unconcerned front.

Then Osayi Alile came to the Green House (my church) and said in effect ‘if your pastor knew all the mistakes I’ve made he’d never invite me and I will still make more mistakes’. The entire period she was there, I hung on every word. And for the first time I really understood the meaning of the words: ‘the words I speak to you are Spirit and life’. I’ve heard and taught on similar lines but this time those words really sank deep enough to not just stop my failure cycle but more importantly, start me on a part of greatness so amazing that I’m almost afraid. It also opened me up to Pastor Tosin Martins amazing message the week after (more on this shortly)and interesting experiences like meeting new people like Taiwo OJO who further demolished any remaining vestages of my failure-it is an event and no! One event does not determine my person.

Somehow in the midst of all these failures I forgot past successes- I graduated best in my Bsc. Class, in the top 10% of my university of Bradford Masters class which I funded largely from personal resources (lots of hard work, crazy hours), awards from the British council and NYSC (best play and it was my first attempt at writing a play)

I knew I had hit something awesome when without much deliberation I could get into my car and drive to LBS and I actually enjoyed myself! For almost 3 years, I couldn’t bear to do this! I was too ashamed, the pain was too raw, to my mind I had not only frittered a great opportunity, I had also managed to exclude myself from an amazing future living the life of my dreams. None would ever consider my PhD application seriously again, I was tainted!

Nonsense!! So if you are currently in half as much a quandary as I was or even more, I am that failure seminar facilitator, I’ve told you how I got to where I was, now it’s your turn, have you ever failed so much so you further sabotaged yourself, leading to even more inexplicable failures- Please share your story! If it’s any consolation most successful people have at sometime in their lives made mistakes.

Please allow me share what I did to get to where I am now in the days to come ‘10 steps from failure to success…’ Watch this space!