Principle 13: Learn from Adversity and Defeat

Introduction

The Thirteenth principle of Napoleon Hill's 17 principles of success is "Learn from Adversity and Defeat". Every setback and adversity carries seeds of equivalent or greater benefit. Remembering this fact can modify our mental reaction and attitude towards adversity and defeats. Defeats and Adversities can be considered as a price of our final success. We must pay something to get some worthy thing and in a similar way, we have to face adversities and defeats to ensure our final success.

Importance of Defeats

When KFC came to China, Jack Ma also went for the interview for the post of a delivery boy with 23 other people but all of them got selected except Jack Ma. He applied for Harvard 10 times but got rejected every time. But he started learning English while working as a city guide. He never accepted setbacks as the final destination and that’s why he became successful. We must also look at defeats as the test conducted by God to gauge our willpower. 

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Jack Ma said, “ Today is a difficult day, tomorrow will be the most difficult day but the day after tomorrow will be very beautiful but most of the people die tomorrow evening”. This is how people accept defeat when they are so close to success.

The Major Causes of Personal Failure

Some of the major causes of failures are listed below. Please do not get disheartened after seeing that most of the causes are already present in you but try to improve your personality after knowing about these causes.
1. Just squandering time due to the absence of a definite major purpose
2. Unnecessarily talking about other’s personal affairs
3. Negative influence of past memories
4. Lack of emotional control
5. Negative Mental attitude

6. Ill health due to poor diet and negative thinking
7. Lack of Ambition
8. Lack of control over tongue
9. Intolerance
10. Low level of persistence
11. Desire for revenge

The Benefits of Defeat

Defeat helps us to count our assets and liabilities (both spiritual and physical). It also strengthens our willpower by challenging us to make relentless efforts. There is a very famous principle being used by all bodybuilders to build a muscular body and this principle is known as resistance training. People who just jerk the dumbbell in a faster way cannot build the muscle but the dumbbell must be returned to its position with a very slow speed and this is called resistance training. Defeats can be compared to resistance training and after any failure, we must deliberately concentrate on the reasons for failure. Bounce back and achieve all success on this earth.

Summary

Each and every person faces failure during his/her lifetime but it depends on the mindset of that person if s/he wants to learn from the failure or blame the situation. A positive mental attitude can give you great help here. People with a positive mental attitude learn from their mistakes and restructure their strategy to achieve the desired goal. Also, remember one more thing that you are not a failure until and unless you accept your defeat. Defeat can never disappoint a person who learns from failures.
All the best and keep working hard.