A Time To Reflect On

A problem is a chance to do my best by experiencing failure. Failure allows me to take a step back, think, plan, and resolve. Without a problem, life would be too easy, everybody would be too similar because everyone would have the same skill. That is a boring life, without a problem being faced there is no room to develop new skills at all, no space for individuality. Therefore I totally agree with the statement “A problem is a chance for you to do your best”, here is an example of a time a problem exposed me to failure later allowing me to learn.

Lessons I have learned from obstacles encountered in time made me learn from experiencing failure. I see failure as a set back that allows room for improvement, a lesson I have learned from failure is I cannot be perfect all the time. The lessons I have learned from failure affected me by letting me grow as a person and realize not everything is going to be perfect the first time every time. A time I experienced failure was very recently rebuilding my truck engine. I took on a challenging project of tearing an engine apart I was not familiar with to rebuild it due to catastrophic failure. This was a huge obstacle that set me back greatly, there were many moments of failure and many times I just had to walk away and take a break. Times of failure throughout this project let me realize sometimes you just have to step away, replan, take advice, and ask questions. What caused me to accept failure was reassembling the engine, getting back into the truck and running, then the engine dying again. I repeated that process several times, fair to say I am very familiar with a 6.0 PowerStroke now.

Challenges that caused me to replan were the most frustrating to me. These challenges were the most frustrating to me because it just didn’t make sense to me which made it very difficult to think of a new way to approach the situation. One example of this was mating the torque converter to the flexplate, for me this occurrence was definitely the most difficult throughout the whole entire project. This set back caused me to pull the engine and do further inspection a few different times, everything was assembled the correct way, this caused me to really think hard and try till I was out of ideas. I am glad I dealt with this problem, it allowed me to take advice from other people and try some other ideas. Another person that has experienced a challenge that led to failure later on being re-achieved is Industrial Injections driver Shawn Baca. Industrial Injection sponsored Dodge Cummins truck “Master Shredder” went to set a dyno record led by Shawn Baca, this later led to the engine exploding and destroying itself. Although this very wild occurrence happened Baca still put down an astonishing 3,000hp. “Master Shredder” later was gone through to collect what was still good and reusable and the rest chucked, now onto the beginning of rebuilding.

Asking questions through this whole project was a set back inside itself. I am the type of person that hates asking questions unless I absolutely have to, leading me to resort to trying everything I can think of before asking anybody. When asking questions I tremendously felt failure, but I accepted it because I realized I cannot have everything work out perfectly without a little bit of help. From asking questions it taught me teamwork through an actual challenge that will be met in life, me asking questions allowed two heads to be put together and plan together. Overall the lessons failure taught me is don’t be afraid to go outside of your comfort zone, you are your own worst enemy. As long as you can put your mind to it, and accept the need of asking for help when it is needed you will discover how strong of a person you are, and figure out you have the capability to do much more than you think.

“Do not fear failure” by Tomasz Stasiuk is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.