–Lessons For Couples:FAILURE IS A TEACHER NOT AN UNDERTAKER
-Bisi Adewale
“Make failure your teacher not your undertaker” Zig Ziglag.
‘’You don’t always win your battles, but it’s good to know you fought’’ – Lauren.
‘’I love the light for it shows me the way, yet I’ll endure the darkness for it shows me the stars’’ – Og Mandino.Lessons For Couples:FAILURE IS A TEACHER NOT AN UNDERTAKER
Ninety percent of what causes you stress today will be irrelevant in a year. Get over it. Move on and enjoy your life.
“For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief” Proverbs 24:16.
BILLY IN THE SCHOOL OF FAILURE
Billy, the CEO of about seven different companies was addressing a group of young business men and women who were having serious troubles in their businesses because of the economic down turn in the country. After addressing them for some time he said, ‘’Young men and women, let me tell you a word that changed my life forever. Maybe it will help you.” He paused and looked around at the young men and women, many of whom had not been able to pay salaries in months and are owing banks too. Their businesses were really in a mess. He said, “‘Failure is a teacher, it is not an undertaker’. That was the word my father in-law told me when my business was in a mess.’’ Lessons For Couples:FAILURE IS A TEACHER NOT AN UNDERTAKER
‘’That fateful afternoon, I had prepared a cocktail of all the drugs I could lay my hands on and was just waiting for my wife to go out. One way or the other my wife who had been suspicious of my intentions discovered the drugs, challenged me about them and called her father who came immediately to talk to me. Billy sipped a cup of water, smiled lightly seeing that his story was getting to his rather depressed audience. He cleared his throat and continued.Lessons For Couples:FAILURE IS A TEACHER NOT AN UNDERTAKER
“My father in law did not say much. He sat down with me for about four hours without uttering a word. Up till today, I don’t know why he did that. When he decided to talk, he moved closer to me, put my head on his laps like a baby, stroked my head like a crazy lover would do and spoke to my ears several times, ‘Billy, failure is not an undertaker; it’s a teacher’. He kept on saying this until I slept off on his lap. My wife later told me that he didn’t stop even when I slept off.Lessons For Couples:FAILURE IS A TEACHER NOT AN UNDERTAKER
‘’When I woke up, I was still on his lap with him still continuing his Nursery rhyme, “Failure is not an undertaker, it’s a teacher”. He continued this for sometime and then he sat me down, laid his feeble hands on my shoulders and repeated again, ‘Failure is not an undertaker, it’s a teacher’. He then looked straight into my eyes and asked me, wanting to know what I had learnt in the school of failure? He told me to write twenty one things I had learnt since my business failed. At first, it was difficult but I was able to get fifteen.
‘’He collected it from me and told me to write another one without looking at the one I gave him. I was able to write sixteen, but some were missing from the first list. He collected it from me and told me to write another one, the third, fourth and fifth time. (At this time it was becoming frustrating, but I had to obey. He was not just my father in-law; he had been my pastor for 38 years, so I had to obey). He asked me to yet write it the sixth and seventh time after which he gave me back all I had written and told me to write only the points that appeared in all the seven lists. I discovered that only seven so appeared in all the lists. He then asked me to write all the seven out in three different sheets of paper, which I did.
He gave me one, took one for himself and gave one to my wife. He lifted up his own copy and told us to lift up ours and then he prayed. ‘Father, these are the things my son Billy was able to learn in the school of failure. Give him power over them. Don’t let him repeat them again. Give him power to start again in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
He collected the one in my wife’s hand, added it to his own and handed them over to me after writing on them ‘Failure is not an undertaker, it is a Teacher’. He told me to meet him three days later with the solution to all the seven problems so that we could have what he called Business Conference..Lessons For Couples:FAILURE IS A TEACHER NOT AN UNDERTAKER
‘’I worked day and night for three days looking for solutions to the seven problems. At last, I was able to get solutions to the problems. I had these documented and went to see Pa Love (That is what we called my father in-law. He was a preacher of Holiness, love and kindness). He told me to go and prayerfully implement them and get back to him after six months with better results. It took me only three months to get back to him with results. He then told me “you would have died carelessly not knowing what failure wanted to do was to teach and not to kill you, because it is a teacher and not an undertaker”.
‘’So young men and women, he said, go and learn in the school of failure how to do it better. Don’t die because failure is not an undertaker.’’
All the young men and women in the hall rose up with a standing ovation for Billy. You could see hope and light in them. Their enthusiasm was all fired up and they where all rearing to go because they now know that failure is a Teacher and not an undertaker.
I brought Billy’s interesting story to you in this book to inspire you. He rose from the ashes of that business failure to have retinue of businesses around the world. Who would have believed that he was at the verge of committing suicide before knowing that failure was just teaching him better ways to do things, not meaning to kill him. You can do it too; only remember that FAILURE IS A TEACHER, NOT AN UNDERTAKER.
Culled from All-Round Success by Bisi Adewale.Available on familybooster.com(Both e-book and hard copy).CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE BOOK HERE .
