We plan so much for success. But we don’t usually plan for failures.
Planning for failures means to avoid it. Or to minimise the impact of it. Insurance doesn’t just come from financial planners. They come from our ability to lessen the impacts from worse case scenarios, and to quickly recover from it. Terrorism, ill health, financial hardship… we don’t think about these things until it happens. That’s why when it happens, we mostly get caught off guard.
We like to think about what we can do when we get rich. We like to think about how we can look when we have better bodies. We like to think about how much we can eat at the buffet table.
Our obsession for good things to happen made us think that it can and it will happen… to us. It’s like a line at the lotteries. We like to obsess over the possibility of good outcomes. That makes us “Dreamers”.
But when we obsess over the possibility of failures, we are labeled “Paranoid” or “Cowards”.
But look at what that thought process has made many of us become. Obsession in “pursuing your dreams” has made us take risks we are often not prepared for. Success made us take sacrifices that affect our most important assets: love, time, dignity and sometimes our own souls.
So it’s true what Jack Ma said: Study the failures to avoid it. Even if you don’t succeed, you’re still doing okay.
