Failure

In the 1850's, Levi Strauss went to California with the dream of becoming rich in the gold rush.

Unfortunately, Levi did not find gold and could easily have abandoned his dreams of wealth.

Levi, however, changed his strategy and tried a different approach. He saw that all of the miners needed comfortable and durable clothing and started work on creating jeans.

Levi created these by initially sewing canvas together. This grew more and more popular and Levi Strauss expanded very quickly.

Greg Billingham, a builder from the UK, decided to give the London Marathon a different take this year.

Greg decided to run the marathon in slow motion, with each step taking between five and six seconds.

On Sunday, Greg completed the marathon, which meant that the race took him over one week to complete. The winning runner, Martin Lel, completed the race in two hours, seven minutes and 41 seconds.

Whenever we do something, we do not succeed or fail. We simply produce results.

What this means is that our actions produce results and then we decide whether or not these results are what we wanted. If they are, then we have succeeded. If they are not, then we have failed.

By understanding the fact that you decide whether a result has been a success or a failure can be enlightening.

Very often in life, we judge ourselves and others too quickly.

We draw conclusions about our own abilities and bind ourselves to these misinterpretations.

The truth is that failure is an important part of our lives.

It is through failing that we know where our strengths and weaknesses lie. Failure guides us towards the path of success.

One of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is what do we really want?

The reason why we should ask ourselves this is that so many people who have everything we could possibly dream of did not find happiness.

A prime example of this is Elvis Presley. He literally ate himself to death.

Similarly, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bob Marley, James Balushi and Jim Morrison all had everything we could possibly dream of.

The difference between success and failure is simply how you interpret the result.

The chemist who invented the Post-It Notes that most people cannot live without is a prime example of this.

At the time, the chemist was working on a solvent that was so strong that once used, it would last forever and could not be pried apart.

However, once the chemist had attempted to invent this solvent, all of his results produced a weak glue that was literally the opposite of what he was aiming for.

There is an inspiring Buddhist story that clearly reflects our ability to improve ourselves.

In the time of Buddha, there lived a man who had murdered 999 people.

Whilst he was searching for his 1000th victim, he met Buddha.

Upon meeting Buddha for the first time, Buddha began to ask the mass murder a series of questions.

Once Buddha knew about this man and his plight, Buddha taught him to meditate and to control his emotions.