While walking through a large garden I spotted something that seemed out of place.  Gardens are supposed to be orderly, filled with straight rows and few surprises for the most part.  But as I turned the corner, instead of a nice decorative pot, or a well cared for flower bed I stumbled upon a single shovel full of dirt lying on the ground.  From the looks of the heap of soil spilled upon the ground and the way the rain had distributed it out in a small circle, it had been here for a few days.

        But the thing that was surprising to me was this beautiful plant growing out from the side of this pile of discarded soil.  Perhaps this clump of dirt fell out of a wheelbarrow load being transplanted in another section of the garden.  Maybe it bounced out and the gardener never noticed, possibly they saw it fall to the ground and thought nothing of the loss of this insignificant amount of sod.  I guess they thought that this dirt was worthless, easily replaced and not worth the effort to scoop it up and place it back in the wheelbarrow.  They wrote it off the books; its just dirt, valueless and useless.  It was a disappointment and considered a failure.

        I am glad that was not the end of the story.  Even in the midst of certain failure, something good was able to spring up from the ruins.  That my friend is the story of success; we fall down, but we get back up again, we fail but we try again, and again and again.  In fact, successful people are failures who keep getting up, moving on, reaching out, and trying again.  There are three rules for success. The first: Get up when you fall down. The second: Begin again.  And the third: Get up when you fall down and begin again.  Past failure often furnishes the finest material from which to build future success.

        The question is not, have I failed.  The real question is am I going to remain a failure.  A failure is not someone who has tried and failed; it is someone who has given up trying and resigned himself to failure; it is not a condition, but an attitude.  Failure is merely an opportunity to start over wiser than before.  Past failures can be guideposts for our future success or they can become shackles that imprison; and the choice is ours.  A man doesn’t become a failure until he is satisfied with being one.  Have you fallen?  Then get up and turn your endings into beginnings.  Remember the dirt.

Something to think about:

• I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.

• We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.

• We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.

• Often the doorway to success is entered through the hallway of failure.

• Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

• Beware of succumbing to failure as inevitable; make it the stepping-stone to success.

• Failure is not falling down; it is remaining there when you have fallen.

• Our mistakes won’t forever damage our lives unless we let them.

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
Rickey Moore