Failure, turning failures to success

I wish someone told me this 10 years ago when I was just graduating with my bachelor. I wish there were seminars, books, and training courses on dealing with rejection. I wish there were special events where people shared their 'failure stories'.

Dealing with failure is such an important part of any person's life. If you think about it, the majority of our life is spent dealing with failures. We rarely get something on the first try.

What is failure? Failure is not when you half-heartedly applied for a job/scholarship and nobody replied. Failure is when you are at the end of your wits and you have no idea what to do next. Imagine being in an unfamiliar house, alone, and then suddenly power goes out, it is pitch dark, you have no idea where you are and you have no idea where to go. This is what real failure looks like.

Everyone sees failure, everyone witnesses such moments. If by any miracle you are have not seen such failures then there are two possibilities: Either you are incredibly lucky, which is nearly impossible. Or you are not aiming high enough, you are playing safe, in this case, you have failed by default already.

So now we know what is failure, then the biggest question here is how do we deal with it?

There are three possibilities when you suffer from failure:

You are not the right person for the position that you are aiming for.

You are the right person but you are not putting in the effort.

You are the right person, you are putting in your full effort but it is not in your naseeb*.

All the conventional advice on failure focuses on point no.2. The common advice says that you just need to keep going, just focus on your passion, just one more step. Edison failed 1000 times before he perfected the bulb, Dyson made 5126 prototypes before he finalized his bag-less vacuum design. We listen to these examples and curse ourselves, maybe we are not putting in the effort, maybe if we spent 12 hours instead of 8, that would make a difference. Maybe we should keep our head down and keep grinding...

Practice makes perfect, but wrong practice only gives wrong results.

You may be working on the wrong thing because you have the wrong idea of success in your head. It is possible that the idea of success was programmed in you from an early age by your environment and your society. Maybe what you are pursuing is not you, it's not suited for you or your personality. You are pursuing something for which you are a wrong fit.

Growing up in the 90s the idea of success for Pakistani children was becoming an Engineer or a doctor. An entire generation of Pakistani kids was programmed to believe that being a doctor or engineer was the best possible profession. (And it was for good reasons at the time). I was one of such kids, I believed that becoming an engineer or a doctor was the best possible way to be successful. So I did become an Engineer. It was during engineering when I found that I was not able to understand analytical concepts as easily as my other friends. But I still kept on going as much as I could.

It was during my first job as an engineer where I finally realized that I was not a natural at being an engineer. I saw my colleagues who were natural at it. They could talk about engineering problems, figure out solutions whereas I was trailing behind trying to catch up with them. The way they worked felt like a fish in the water. Effortless and enjoyable.

That's when I realized I want to be like a fish in the water. I want to choose what I am natural at.

Accepting your weakest areas is a blessing because when you do that you automatically start to find out what you are good at. Even if you don't know, your colleagues and peers start to see that and they ask for your help in those areas.

For me that area was communication. It was taking complicated ideas, thoughts, and queries and them putting them in words. I was a natural at it. It didn't seem anything special to me. To me it was effortless and therefore it seemed that anyone anywhere can do it. But that was not true. I would be asked several times by my managers and colleagues in drafting a particular tricky email or phone communication. Most of all, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed taking complicated ideas and putting them in words or explaining them to others.

The reason why I explained all this is that we are born with different talents and natural abilities. We have different IQs. It is useless to excel in a field where you are not natural and don't feel you are enjoying it.

So to summarise, this is what you should be feeling internally when you are doing something that aligns with you:

You do not feel it's a special talent because it comes naturally to you. However, when others see you working they tell you that it is not normal. It doesn't seem like work to you. It just flows through you like water.

You enjoy the process, no matter what the outcome you really enjoy doing it. A true blood entrepreneur gets a thrill every time there is a new business idea in his mind, he gets a kick every time there is a roadblock. The hustle, and the grind motivates him. A natural Engineer enjoys the problem, formulating complex equations. Analytical thinking does not bore him.

How do we find what we are natural at? We continuously explore, take risks, and then take feedback. We push our limits and risk failure.

So failure is an essential part of failing less. But we learn from that experience. Did we enjoy it? did it feel right to us?

When we find what we are a natural at then the reason no. 2 is eliminated. Because whatever we do it feels like play to us. We are not afraid of working. In fact, it does not even feel like work to us. We can spend hours, days just happily working on that thing.

This brings us to reason no.3 for failure: Maybe we are a natural at something, maybe we are even working as hard as we can, but we are still not getting it. Why does it happen? Maybe it is not in our naseeb. It is not destined for us.

It took me a very long time to understand this, but let me explain with an example.

When I was 15 I started memorizing the Quran. It took me 3 years of continuous studying and I was able to accomplish that. During my time I saw several students, who were diligent, intelligent and hardworking. Their parents came with the most sincere and deep-seated desire so their child can become a Hafiz-e-Quran, they would hire the best teachers, create the most positive environment for their kid. The kid himself would work hard. Studying day and night. But it wouldn't work. They wouldn't be able to do it. Everything on paper would say otherwise. But still, they couldn't. And no matter how much they tried to force it, it wouldn't work. They would fail again and again.

To this day I do not think it was a lack of intention, or hard work. God didn't love them any less than He loved me. It just wasn't destined for them.

It simply wasn't meant to be.

That realization is the hardest to stomach. Because there are no apparent reasons for our failure. We always want to know reasons, but there are places where logic cannot go, and that's where faith comes in. Faith and belief that we did our best, but it wasn't meant to be.

Failure is essential part of life, but it extremely important to fail at the right thing. Learning from the failure and then calibrating our actions.

I hope you learned something important from this guide. Please comment and let me know what you think.

Difference between socialism and capitalism

 Capitalism and socialism are generally seen as polar opposites, and discussions of either system are often framed as in opposition to the other. The modern idea of socialism has roots in Greek philosopher Plato but emerged as a popular political idea in the early 19th century among German radicals like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. There are many forms of socialism, but at its core, socialism is an economic system in which a whole community — not just bosses or private companies — control the means of production equally. It assumes that people are naturally cooperative, instead of competitive. The goal of socialism is an egalitarian society run by democratically elected representatives for the benefit of all in accordance with a set of collectively determined parameters; unlike under capitalism, industry and production is run by the state, and the acquisition of private property is seen as counterproductive. Capitalist critics of socialism believe that the system slows economic growth, rewards worker laziness, and can stifle individual rights and free expression.

In a capitalist country, the focus is on profits over anything else; in a socialist country, the public is seen to be more important, and social welfare is a major priority. The United States, the U.K., and Germany are examples of modern capitalist countries. Many other countries like Norway, Sweden, Canada, and the Netherlands incorporate socialist ideas into their societies, as does the U.S. to some degree; for example, universal health care and Social Security are both socialistic concepts

Effects of capitalism

 The kind of impact that capitalism has on your life depends on whether you’re a worker or a boss. For someone who owns a company and employs other workers, capitalism may make sense: The more profits your company brings in, the more resources you have to share with your workers, which theoretically improves everyone’s standard of living. It’s all based on the principle of supply and demand, and in capitalism, consumption is king. The problem is that many capitalist bosses aren’t great at sharing the wealth, which is why one of the major critiques of capitalism is that it is a huge driver of inequality, both social and economic.

Capitalism takes the position that “greed is good,” which its supporters say is a positive thing — greed drives profits and profits drive innovation and product development, which means there are more choices available for those who can afford them. Its opponents say that capitalism is, by nature, exploitative, and leads to a brutally divided society that tramples the working classes in favor of fattening the rich’s wallets. The Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, began as an anti-capitalist protest against “the 1%” — the richest of the rich of the capitalist class — and asked why they are allowed to grow fat and happy while 20% of all American children live in poverty

Who is a capitalist

 Individual capitalists are typically wealthy people who have a large amount of capital (money or other financial assets) invested in business, and who benefit from the system of capitalism by making increased profits and thereby adding to their wealth. A capitalist nation is dominated by the free market, which is an economic system in which both prices and production are dictated by corporations and private companies in competition with one another, and places a heavy focus on private property, economic growth, freedom of choice, and limited government intervention. Generally, those to the right of the political spectrum tend to be pro-capitalist; those on the left veer toward anti-capitalism.

History of capitalism

 The origins of capitalism are complicated, and stretch back to the 16th century, when the British systems of power largely collapsed after the Black Death, a deadly plague that killed off up to 60% of Europe’s entire population. A newly formed class of merchants began to trade with foreign countries, and this newfound demand for exports hurt local economies and began to dictate overall production and pricing of goods. It also led to the spread of colonialism, slavery, and imperialism.

The death of feudalism — a hierarchical system often seen as oppressive that kept poor people bonded to their masters’ land, which they farmed in exchange for a place to live and military protection — also left rural British peasants with no homes and no work, which eventually funneled them away from the countryside and into urban centers. These former farm workers then had to sell their labor in a newly competitive work environment in order to survive, while the state worked in concert with the new capitalists to establish a maximum wage and “clamp down on beggars.”

By the 18th century, England had converted into an industrial nation, and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution saw an explosion of manufacturing overtake the island. It is within those smoky factories and flammable textile mills that our modern idea of capitalism — and the opposition to it — began to fully flourish. In 1776, Scottish economist Adam Smith published his treatise, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which is regarded as the bedrock upon which modern capitalism stands. Though some of his specific ideas about value and labor differ from those of modern economists, Smith is often called “the father of capitalism.

Socialist system in capitalism

 The socialist challenge of capitalism required an effective response. The first chapter of this rivalry was opened in the late nineteenth century. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in his struggle with the strong German socialist movement, turned towards the introduction of welfare institutions. Pension system, health care, and other welfare institutions were introduced for workers to take the wind out of the sail of the emerging socialist movement. For these developments, the Great Depression of the early 1930s brought about a turning point. The Swedish Social Democratic government, elected in 1932, started building a welfare state. President Franklin D. Roosevelt also initiated major social legislation and the introduction of the social security system. The comprehensive system of the welfare state, however, emerged only after World War II in Western Europe. Capitalism, in contrast with its nineteenth century features, initiated widespread social legislation. Paid vacation, short workweek, nationwide pension systems, free health care, education, maternity leave, cheap housing, and many other institutions were established. Human rights were re-evaluated and the right to work, i.e., a full-employment policy, became dominant. Inequity, at least in the middle layers of the society, markedly diminished in the advanced capitalist countries.

The period after the Second World War also saw the spread of mixed economies. Almost all of the advanced Western European countries, led by France and Britain, nationalized entire sectors of their economies and established new state-owned firms in various industries.

Capitalism underwent a spectacular transformation. In his article on The Instability of Capitalism (1928), the leading Austrian-American economist, Joseph Schumpeter, prophesied the transformation of the system and the fading of the original meaning of capitalism. He maintained that capitalism is inherently stable and able to recover from great crises, but generates socio-intellectual effects discordant with its spirit and institutions. As a consequence, ‘Capitalism is … in so obvious process of transformation into something else … [that] it will be merely matter of taste and terminology to call it Socialism or not.’

Towards the end of the twentieth century, capitalism adjusted to the new historical situation and markedly transformed but preserved entrepreneurial interest, market flexibility, efficiency, competitiveness, and reached its highest prosperity and fastest growth rate ever. The Western core countries of the world system successfully adjusted to a new technological-communication revolution and became the leader of new technologies and the rise of postindustrial society.

During the long period of postwar prosperity, a part of the former Asian and South European peripheries of the capitalist world system reached a higher than average growth and became an integrated and equal part of the core countries. After a long period of rivalry, capitalism emerged victorious while the parallel world system of centrally planned state socialism, which conquered one-third of the world and influenced an even greater part by its policy after World War II, collapsed in 1989–91. The former Soviet Bloc countries introduced radical market reforms, thus re-establishing capitalism. During the last third of the twentieth century, laissez-faire capitalism became the leading model again. Neo-liberal economics triumphed and challenged mixed economy and welfare state.

Capitalism in late twentieth century reached a new stage in its history. The main trend of this new age is globalization. National boundaries and national economies rapidly lost their importance. Multi- or transnational companies penetrated previously independent economies. Foreign direct investment became instrumental all over the world, including the advanced core countries. Towards the end of the 1990s nearly one-third of American exports and two-thirds of imports were intrafirm deliveries. About one-third of French, Dutch, and British industrial output was produced and roughly 25–40 percent of their research and development expenditure was financed by affiliates of transnational companies. In Ireland, and former state-socialist Hungary, foreign affiliates produced two-thirds of industrial output and financed roughly 70 percent of research and development expenditures.

While globalization, in some cases, contributed to a successful catching-up process with the core, it also preserved and even strengthened the core–periphery inequity. The gap between advanced core and the peripheries was growing considerably: intercountry income spread was 10:1 in 1913; 26:1 in 1950, but it increased to 40:1 at the end of the twentieth century. A newly globalized but even more polarized capitalist world system, dominated by an expanding Western core, was emerging at the turn of the millennium.

Capitalism : An overview

 Capitalism has its own particular geography, which must be attended to if we are to adequately understand its nature, and limits. Our very definition of capitalism references the form capitalist practices took once they arrived in Europe, and discourses presenting capitalism as the best economic system neglect the violence inflicted on other peoples and places in making this happen. This European version of capitalism fails to deliver on its promise of prosperity in part due to geography. Capitalism's spatial extent means that it produces persistent uneven geographical development, enriching some at the expense of others and necessitating experimentation with alternatives. Its dialectical relationship with labor and the more-than-human world can undermine its coherence from the outside. Finally, the persistence of more-than-capitalist practices is testimony to capitalism's less than hegemonic status in practice, notwithstanding discourses presenting it as currently globally hegemonic.