Festival Of Forgiveness

By Billi Lim November 2000

Once again we come to that time of the year when we begin to focus on our humanness. It's a time when we try to forgive. Whenever we talk about forgiveness we tend to refer to forgiving others.
In this article I would like to refer to one person that most of us tend to forget - ourselves!

Yes, we need to learn to forgive ourselves - for all the dreams we fail to achieve, for all the blunders and mistakes we made, - for all our "failures" of the year.

If we don't learn to forgive ourselves we give rise to the ailment known to many as 'REGRET'.
And this is one hell of an enemy that drags down many a fine man.

To regret or to think of "what might have been" would never change anything. In fact, it will draw a person more and more away from reality. We just can't alter the past. We can only live now and in the future. And how we can change what we don't like in the past is to have the courage to act now!
The action that we take now will determine what we will get in the future - no matter what we experienced in the past.

Remember, PAST FAILURES DO NOT EQUAL FUTURE FAILURE!

In fact     PAST FAILURES    +    LEARNING    CAN EQUAL FROM IT FUTURE SUCCESS

Failure can be a great teacher or mentor to your future success or it can be a tyrannical dictator that can drastically limit or even destroy all hope of future success.

Take the case of Steven K Scott the co-founder of the American Telecast Corporation and its group of consumer goods companies. He failed at 9 jobs in his first 6 years after college. Yet in his 10th job, he and his partners created more than a dozen multi-million dollar companies from scratch, with a total of over 1 billion dollars in sales!

This is what he has to say:-

"I have experienced terrible failures and tremendous successes. Although I would always choose to experience success (I'm not an idiot), I can tell you that I have learned very little from my successes. On the other hand, my failures have been some of my greatest teachers. In fact, my failures ultimately provided a strong and secure foundation upon which most of my greatest successes have been built…use your past failures as a springboard to future success instead of using them as an excuse for accepting mediocrity."

Yes, go ahead, try again… remember, the last time you try is the time you start to fail.

Wishing every Muslim reader a SELAMAT HARI RAYA and all Christian friends a MERRY X'MAS.

And to all - a new millennium. Happy, healthy, courageous and prosperous NEW 2001!

Your Fellow Traveler in Time

Billi Lim

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