Jewish people acknowledge an undeniable truth: everyone fails at some point in life.
Although they account for only 0.02% of the population, Jewish people represent more than 10% of those on the Fobes list of the world's 400 richest people, more than 10% of the CEOs of the world's 500 largest companies as ranked by Fortune, and around 30% of Nobel Prize winners.
Jewish people are associated with success, but how do they face failure? They acknowledge an undeniable truth: everyone fails at some point in life. The Torah also holds that no human being is expected to be perfect.
Even the Jewish leader Moses is said to have made a mistake when he struck a rock to find water for his people instead of speaking to it as God commanded. The message is that failure is simply part of human life, and there is no reason to fear it. What challenges each person is how they respond: failure can lead to further failure or to even greater heights of success.
There are 2 core points in the Jewish view of failure: Avoid blaming and fix it. Precisely because they see failure as part of life, Jewish people encourage facing it rather than blaming everything or everyone but yourself. Blaming others means you will keep making the same mistakes and then wonder why you never improve.
So how do Jewish people correct mistakes? They have a 4-step process called h’eshbon ha’nefesh, practiced daily or at least 2 times a week, to look inward and recognize their strengths and weaknesses:
Recognize Your Mistakes and Take Responsibility for Them
The first step in examining your inner self is to recognize and take responsibility for mistakes, and thereby recognize the potential damage they cause to your business or life. This has profound implications for awareness.
For example, one common recurring mistake is procrastination. This is the biggest obstacle to real success. Regardless of a task's importance, many people seem never to get themselves moving early enough to complete it properly. They hesitate and delay until forced to race against time and face deadline pressure. This also increases stress and anger.
If people are honest with themselves, they will recognize they have a problem. Fixing it, however, is difficult. To resolve it, fully understand the damage procrastination causes at every level. Also see procrastination as an enemy standing between you and success. This gives you the motivation to fight it when it next appears and reach success. The same process applies to habits such as anger, lack of focus and pessimism.
Recognizing Errors in Thinking
Once you recognize failure and its negative impact on your life, you can move to step 2: identifying the flaw in your thinking that caused the mistake.
Consider arrogance. It is driven by the mistaken belief that you are worth more than others. This leads to actions that result in failure when you underestimate competitors. By carefully analyzing the thought process behind arrogance or any bad habit that causes failure, you can identify the faulty logic and begin correcting it.
Acknowledge your own and others' mistakes
The equally important 3rd step is to acknowledge your own mistakes and those of others. There is considerable wisdom behind this perspective.
A well-known lifestyle habits coach once said that his clients' knowledge that he would call and check on them motivated them to complete their tasks effectively. The idea is that when other people know about your problems and mistakes, they can encourage you to avoid repeating them. So if you acknowledge your problems to those around you, you will find it harder to keep repeating them.
Returning to procrastination, once you admit this problem to your colleagues, you will find it difficult to continue the habit. You know everyone understands the real reason for delays in the project. This will push you to stop putting things off. You can apply the same approach to other habits that lead to failure in life.
Promise Yourself You Will Not Give In Again
This fourth step is a commitment to help you persist in avoiding misguided patterns of thought. However, making a verbal promise to yourself is easy, and breaking it is even easier. So write a personal commitment to yourself, your spouse, your best friend, your coach, or even God to change your thinking and habits.
Kim Thủy
Trí Thức Trẻ
