"Everybody Fails" by Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D. has 30+ years experience as a Life Coach and
Licensed Psychologist.  He is available for coaching in any area
presented in "Practical Life Coaching" (formerly "Practical
Psychology").  Initial coaching sessions are free.  


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EVERYBODY FAILS

By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

       Someone once said, "The road to success is paved with failures."
Failure begins when the baby tries to crawl, stand, walk and run.  It
continues whenever anybody attempts something new that s/he has never
done before.  Rarely does anybody succeed at something new without
making mistakes (failures) along the way.  Those attempts and failures
we call a "learning curve."

       Michael Gersham, in his book, "Getting It Right The Second Time,"
writes of forty-nine product failures.  Among these were Kleenex,
Jell-O, and Pepsi, the opera "Carmen," the book "The Celestine
Prophecy," and forty-four others.  Walt Disney went bankrupt...five
times.  Now that is a lot of failure.

               The original Greek word for "sin" was an old archer's term,
"hamartia," which means to "miss the mark."  When we miss the mark, we
sin.  Does this mean we, as human beings are all "sinners?"  Are we
all failures?  No.  It means we all regularly miss the mark.  In the
Olympics, all but one miss the gold.  Are all those other athletes
failures?  Are they sinners?  Only if we judge them to be so.  Only if
they judge themselves to be so.

       Great baseball batting averages are above .300.  That means six out
of ten times, the best players fail to get to first base.  Now that is
a lot of failure!  Or is it?  Only if we judge them to be so.  By the
time football's "Super Bowl" is over, every team in the NFL has missed
the mark of winning all their games ...at least once.  Does that mean
every player in the NFL is a failure?  Only if we judge them to be so.

       In his book, "Should You Quit Before You're Fired?," Paul Pilzer
tells the story of a father observing his little boy throwing a
baseball up in the air with one hand, then swinging his bat to hit it.
 The boy missed three times in a row.  After the third time, he spun
around and fell to the ground shouting, "Strike three, I'm out."
Trying to hide his disappointment, the father ran over to help his son
up.  Before he "failed" to get to him, the boy jumped up and said,
"So, what do you think?  Not bad for a pitcher, huh, Dad?!"  To his
son, three misses out of three attempts was not a lot of failure.  Or
was it?

       Failure is a judgment.  It's definition is based upon a verb...to
fail, which means "to fall short of success in something expected,
attempted, desired."  In order to avoid failing, many people never
expect anything, never risk attempting anything new, sometimes never
desire anything.  Their own fear of being judged "a failure" leads
them to never attempt anything without a guaranteed successful
outcome.  And in life, there are no guaranteed outcomes!
Consequently, those people who are fearful of criticism or "failure"
never attempt anything, and the outcome is precisely the same as if
they had tried and missed their mark...failure.  If the archer never
shoots the arrow, he never ever hits anything, let alone the target.
Is it a greater "sin" to miss the mark having shot the arrow, or is it
more "sinful" to have never drawn back the bow?

       Rather than never attempting anything, perhaps the fearful need to
change their expectations.  Band leader, Les Brown once said, "Always
shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you land among the Stars."
Perhaps we need to fail at judging ourselves to be failures.  Perhaps
we should not judge ourselves at all.

       When we stop judging ourselves as failures, we are set free to enjoy
life.  We all miss the marks we set for ourselves.  Perhaps the
greatest target for psychological health is to take delight in being
alive, in being who we are no matter how often we "miss the mark."
You are a failure or success only if you say so!

       We all find goals useful in focusing our attention.  We are all free
to create and change our goals.  Keep in mind we all fail depending
only on our perceived goal and judgment.  Failure and success are
states of mind.  They exist only if you mentally say so.  And we are
each free to choose whether or not we say so.

       One key to happiness is to enjoy the process of living, to take
delight in playing the game regardless of the outcome.  Choose to
actively enjoy the challenges of the life-long game called "Life."
Keep in mind, as long as you are alive, you cannot fail unless you
choose to.  Success or failure in living is always your choice.

Humanity Has Reached the Point Where it Can and is Listening to the Voice of God

John Smallman, February 26, 2011

Your spiritual evolution is accelerating, as it must, and the divine energies surrounding and enveloping you are intensifying as you continue asking for help from your guides, angels, and from God Himself. What you are doing is of great importance, it is totally in alignment with the divine Will, and consequently you cannot fail to achieve your aim, which is to evolve or, more correctly, to return whence you came, to eternal union with God.

The illusion has dragged you into a state of great suffering that was only possible because you were given free will, which allowed you to reject your eternal loving relationship with God in which you were created, and build an environment where you pretended that you were separated from Him. That, of course, is impossible because all that exists does so within God. Nevertheless, using the gifts that He had bestowed upon you, you went ahead and imagined an environment without His loving Presence, and chose to experiment with a very large number of rather strange ideas that can only truly be described as quite insane.

The results of these experiments are all around you, wherever you look, and they are not a pretty sight. Initially your intentions were not unkind, just thoughtless. You could have used your reason and intelligence to calculate where your experiments would lead you, but it seemed that there was so much fun in not knowing that you rushed ahead and became addicted to the sense of excitement that your lack of foreknowledge provoked.

By the time the pain and suffering had become endemic it seemed that there was no way back, and that you had permanently and gravely offended your Father by your ill-conceived and basically thoughtless behavior. It seemed to you that you had destroyed His divine creation of beauty and perfection and were, therefore, beyond forgiveness. You had forgotten that the environment in which it appeared that you had your existence was but an imaginary one that you had built to play in and hide from Him. Your imaginations had convinced you that what you were experiencing was absolutely real, and you began to blame one another for your suffering, and that led only to further suffering. To cease experiencing suffering you have to cease imposing it on others.

You have the power and the divine grace to recognize that what you are experiencing as reality, and have been experiencing that way for eons, is, in truth, an illusion that you continue to support and maintain as long as you continue to attack and blame one another. Judgment must cease because it destroys every effort you make to establish peace. For eons every societal system that has been overthrown has only been replaced by a similar one containing all the same faults and problems the revolutionaries claimed that they would put right, as your world history clearly shows. There have always been wise ones among you offering sane guidance, but in the excitement and increased insanity of revolution you refused to listen.

Finally humanity has reached the point where it can and is listening to the Voice of God, which has always been available and expressed through the wise and gentle ones amongst you. Now you can start to recognize that this painful realm of confusion, fear, and anxiety is but a hideous nightmare from which you can awaken by laying down judgment, blame, and punishment, and replacing those destructive attitudes with gentleness, understanding, forgiveness, and cooperation. You are seeing this happening all over the world, as people support each other peacefully to disempower regimes that have controlled them instead of honoring them as God’s beloved children.

You are all divinely loved. You have never left the Presence of God. You will awaken from the seemingly endless nightmare of ferocious disagreement, judgment, and war. Then your joy will be complete because in Reality, God’s divine Presence, there is nothing else.