This is the Eighth post in our blog series about lessons learned from failures.  Please come back the next Friday as we conclude the series. This weeks post comes to us from Ana-Cristina Gonzalez.

There is a saying that goes “Pain is temporary”, but as I was thinking about this blog post I kept thinking about how FAILURE is temporary…as long as you get back up and try again.  That’s the biggest lesson I learned and keeping learning from my failures.

I was talking about this blog post subject with a very good friend of mine and he asked me what I was going to write about.  I told him that I was going to write about a really bad work experience that I had and he asked me “Do you consider that a failure?”  I surprised myself by saying, “No, but at the time I was afraid that everyone else would think I was a failure.”

Though I feared that I would be judged by that “failure” for the rest of my career, I pushed forward.  I put myself out there and new opportunities came my way.  At the time, I swore I would never work in the type of job that I had just left.  I would never accept a situation like that again.  Well, God has a sense of humor.  I’m still in that field of work, but I took the lessons I learned and made my next job even better.

I think I have a good grasp on the idea of failure and knowing that it’s going to happen.  We are all going to experience it in some way or another, whether it is in our personal or professional lives.  What distinguishes us from one another is how we handle that failure.  Do we embrace it?  Do we hide from it?  Do we let it define us?  Do we stop trying?  Do we learn from it?  Do we try again?  Do we figure out where it went wrong?  Do we own it instead of it owning us?

Every failure, every bump in the road, every trial has a lesson and a purpose.  Failure is hard, but it shows you are taking risks and trying out new things.  How are you going to use these experiences to become a better person and leader?  How will you turn this failure into a success?

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

Ana-Cristina González, Director of Stewardship and Development for Saint William’s Catholic Church in Round Rock. She holds a BS in Human Development and Family Sciences from THE University of Texas and a Masters in Communications and Organizational Leadership from Gonzaga University. When she is not spending time with her amazing niece, she can be found enjoying the wonderful city of Austin, TX!