Making Failure a Launching Point!

I heard LaDonna Gatlin say, “Failure is fertilizer”.
I’ve had plenty of failures along the way, big and small alike. When I failed a tactics during my second deployment to Iraq, I was devastated, because I KNEW people were watching to see how I performed. I felt like I had let so many people down: women, black folks, my family…the Corps. I passed it the next week with flying colors, but that wasn’t the point. I hadn’t passed it the first time, and not passing it the first time had dire consequences.
Through an interesting journey too lengthy to share here, I realized that failure placed me in the right places at the right time.
What did I learn?
I believe things happen to direct our paths, and how we respond versus react to them is the key to how a situation turns out.  Second, all our experiences are just preparing us for that next mission we’ve been called to do in life.
Failure is inevitable along the way. Make it a launching point instead of your final destination!