Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Welcome to your Wish fulfilled.
[00:00:07] It's the magical podcast to feel that you've already attained what you want and to calmly and gently move forward into that beautiful space.
[00:00:23] Today's session, we're diving into the next chapter of this fascinating book, the Law of Success by Paramahansa Yogananda.
[00:00:32] And we're talking about failures. Because when we are wanting to make something happen in our life, we're manifesting things, we're moving towards it. Sometimes it doesn't work out right. We fail.
[00:00:48] Anyone who's ever done sales realizes that you're going to get more no's than yeses, right? Many people can't handle that. Many people won't do anything because they're afraid of failure.
[00:00:59] If I trace back my own perfectionism and inability to finish things, it all comes down to fear of failure.
[00:01:09] Fear of rejection, you know.
[00:01:11] So on our wonderful adventure to create the life we want and to manifest our pure desires, we will come across failures.
[00:01:23] And some of the things we want might take a while to get there. And they might require us going through multiple levels of failure before we come out the other end victorious.
[00:01:33] So let's dive into what Yogananda has to say about this topic of failure.
[00:01:41] Even failures should act as stimulants to your willpower and your material and spiritual growth.
[00:01:54] When you have failed in any project, it's helpful to analyze every factor in the situation in order to eliminate all chances in the future that you might repeat the same errors.
[00:02:12] The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success. And he italicized this. The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
[00:02:34] The bludgeon of circumstances may bruise you, but keep your head erect.
[00:02:42] Always try once more, no matter how many times you failed.
[00:02:49] Fight when you think that you can fight no longer, or when you think that you have already done your best, or until your efforts are crowded with success.
[00:03:00] A little story will make this point clear.
[00:03:07] A and B were fighting after a long time. A said to himself, I cannot go on any longer.
[00:03:14] But B thought, just one more punch and he gave it and down went A.
[00:03:25] You must be like that. Give a last punch.
[00:03:31] Use the unconquerable power of will to overcome all difficulties in life.
[00:03:41] New efforts after failing bring true growth, but they must be well planned and charged with increasing intensity of attention and with dynamic willpower.
[00:04:01] Suppose you have failed so far.
[00:04:06] It would be foolish to give up the struggle, accepting failure as the decree of fate.
[00:04:12] It's better to die struggling than to Abandon your efforts while there is still a possibility of accomplishing something more.
[00:04:22] For even when death comes, your struggles must soon be renewed in another life.
[00:04:30] Success or failure is the just result of what you have done in the past plus what you do now.
[00:04:40] So you should stimulate all the success thoughts of past lives until they are revitalized and able to overrule the influence of all failure tendencies in the present life.
[00:04:56] The successful person must have had more serious difficulties to contend with than one who has failed, but the former trains himself to reject the thought of failure at all times.
[00:05:11] You should transfer your attention from failure to success, from worry to calmness, from mental wanderings to concentration, from restlessness to peace, and from peace to divine bliss.
[00:05:33] Divine bliss within.
[00:05:35] When you attain this state of self realization, the purpose of your life will have been gloriously fulfilled.
[00:05:48] This is very, very rich, powerful chapter.
[00:05:53] Let's get into it.
[00:05:56] Failures should arouse determination. So even failures should act as stimulants. Isn't that a nice statement?
[00:06:04] Stimulants, right? Normally we think, oh dear, it's a depressant. Normally, isn't it? Oh no. Oh God. Oh, I'm so awful. Oh dear, oh dear.
[00:06:14] It should be like a strong cup of coffee, right?
[00:06:18] Failure should act as stimulants.
[00:06:22] Power for your willpower and your material and spiritual growth, right? Just even thinking about that is powerful. If you think, okay, I failed, this is great. This is going to get me going. This is this opportunity to suck the stimulant out of it, right? Feel the difference. One is, oh, I failed, I'm no good, I'm just going to lie down and cry. The other is to get a charge out of it and say, okay, let's keep going.
[00:06:51] When you have failed in any project, it's helpful to analyze every factor in the situation in order to eliminate all chances of future in the future that you might repeat the same errors.
[00:07:07] So first you get stimulated, you get a charge, then you say, okay, let me look at this.
[00:07:12] What did I do wrong?
[00:07:16] It Was there anything that could be improved?
[00:07:20] So we just need a bit of self reflection.
[00:07:24] All right? I said I was going to do this and I ended up doing that. How can I learn from it?
[00:07:30] You can even talk to AI about this.
[00:07:33] Here's what happened.
[00:07:34] You know, I sent this message out to somebody and this was the response.
[00:07:39] Is there anything could be different? How can I reset it?
[00:07:44] So just think about it.
[00:07:46] If you're doing something that is not the best way of doing it and that's why it failed, then you could figure out how to do it differently.
[00:07:56] I saw a video on of this experiment where they had ants, right? They gave them this piece of food, like a stick thing that they needed for their nest or whatever it was, right? It was too big and they had to go through a maze with this stick. It could be done, but it was a bit complicated.
[00:08:16] So they had to go through the maze and they had to go like one way and then the other way and then the other way. And they kind of. If you've ever, like, tried to take a big piece of furniture through a door into a room, like if you ever moved into a house, you know, how are we going to get this couch into this room? And you have to have weird angles to get it in. If you've ever done something like that.
[00:08:37] It was basically that kind of situation, but it was a maze. There's a whole bunch of these weird things they had to go through. So they did ants. They gave ant a certain size thing that they had to move through this little maze and then they replicated that with people. They made it all bigger and they gave them this massive piece of wood. Basically it was the same size proportionately as the ant, right? So you've got ants doing, getting through the maze and you got people going through the same maze. Who do you think was better?
[00:09:12] Because obviously people are a lot more intelligent than ants.
[00:09:17] Turned out the ants were faster than the people.
[00:09:26] And this was an experiment with people who wanted to do it. If most people were in that situation, they just would have given up.
[00:09:32] They just would have totally given up. Ants don't give up. They just keep at it until they die, right? They just don't give up. They. That didn't work. That didn't work. That didn't work. That didn't work. That didn't work. All right? And then they figure it out. It might be 50 times.
[00:09:48] So he's making a really good point here.
[00:09:51] Nowadays, so many people try something once and they say, oh, it was too hard, oh, it didn't work, and that's it, they're finished.
[00:10:01] I help a lot of people become spiritual life coaches and meditation teachers.
[00:10:06] The people who get success, who do really well, have booked out, set clients and sessions all day long and all the money they need and travel the world.
[00:10:15] They just didn't give up. Basically, that's the difference. They kept taking action and kept doing stuff. People who don't get results are the ones who learn things or they don't even bother learning.
[00:10:27] They learn a little bit. Oh, it's too much. I can't be bothered to do this. Or they try it once and they say, oh, this is so hard.
[00:10:34] And then they give up. Of course it's not going to work. You know, even making a cake, right? If you try to make a cake, if you've never done it before, it's probably not going to be the best cake in the world first time you do it.
[00:10:47] So if it doesn't work out, then analyze every factor in the situation to eliminate all chances that it's going to happen again.
[00:10:59] Now, he says the season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
[00:11:06] This is in italics. The season of failure, when you are down and it's not working, that is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
[00:11:23] Okay, it didn't work. What am I going to do differently? I've analyzed what didn't work before. I've learned from it now. Let me sow seeds of success for the future.
[00:11:34] The bludgeon of circumstances may bruise you, but keep your head high. Always try once more no matter how many times you have failed. That's such an important point. Always try once more no matter how many times you failed.
[00:11:57] Fight when you think you can fight no longer. Or. Or when you think that you've already done your best, or until your efforts are crowned with success.
[00:12:08] Because we're fighting with ourselves most of the time, right? And our capacity to just keep moving forward.
[00:12:15] So even when you think, I've done everything, I'm so tired, I can't do any more. Just do one more.
[00:12:21] A little story will make this point clear. So imagine there are two people in the boxing match.
[00:12:27] A and b were fighting. After a long time, A said to himself, I can't go on any longer.
[00:12:34] But b thought, just one more punch, and he gave it, and down went a.
[00:12:43] You must be like that. Give a last punch, right? This is the principle of three feet from gold.
[00:12:52] Many people put in all the work, Put in all the work, put in all the work.
[00:12:56] And three feet from gold. They're digging, digging, digging, digging, digging. They're really close to this massive amount of gold, and then they give up.
[00:13:10] Give one last punch, Give one last dig. Just do one last thing. Send one more message, you know, have one last crack at it.
[00:13:22] Use the unconquerable power of will which he talked about in other sessions which we've gone into, to overcome all difficulties in life.
[00:13:33] New efforts after failure bring true growth, but they must be well planned and charged with increasing intensity of attention and with dynamic Willpower, right? So new efforts after failure, because you've learned something, you've been stimulated by it, you're willing to keep taking action.
[00:14:02] It can give you a lot of energy, but it must be well planned. Think about it like if we haven't learned from our lessons. So if, for example, I'm doing something wrong, let's say I'm trying to lose weight, right? But the way I'm trying to do it, it's just not going to work.
[00:14:20] If I haven't analyzed what I'm doing wrong and I keep doing the same thing, then it's what Einstein says, isn't it?
[00:14:29] Trying to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result is insanity.
[00:14:36] So if I'm saying, yeah, but I've been eating pizzas all day for three months.
[00:14:40] It's my pizza diet. I've had loads of pizzas. All I eat is pizza. I still haven't lost any weight.
[00:14:46] It's like, yeah, but the pizza diet probably not going to work very well.
[00:14:50] Pizza diets generally don't help you lose weight. Oh, but I wanted to do it because I like my pizzas. All right, so if after a year of the pizza diet, I've gained weight, then I might want to discover a different diet, right?
[00:15:06] I thought sitting around watching TV, eating pizza would help me lose at least £20.
[00:15:11] So you say, okay, no, no, you need to eat differently and actually go for a walk occasionally.
[00:15:19] So once we've been stimulated, we've got a better idea, We've got a new plan. We need to plan it out properly and then use the new plan with dynamic willpower. Focus on one thing again and again and again.
[00:15:36] And also use all your opportunities.
[00:15:39] I mentioned this in another session. I'll mention it again now.
[00:15:42] We have so many opportunities which we're not using.
[00:15:46] In fact, we have too many opportunities, right?
[00:15:51] So many opportunities. Actually, the issue many people are facing is because they have too many opportunities, they can't tell which ones are the good ones.
[00:16:01] Does that make sense?
[00:16:04] If you have a hundred books you could read, a thousand emails you could check 500 different ways to do whatever you want to do. Loads of people in your life, thousands of contacts, they're all opportunities to help you get what you want, Right? But they're not all good, they're not all the same. So we're in a situation now where we have to cut it back to the key things that actually make a difference, figure out what it is first, then come up with a plan based on what's actually going to work, then we can use our willpower.
[00:16:44] So suppose you have failed so far. Let's imagine you've been trying to get something again and again and again and still you haven't done it.
[00:16:51] It'll be foolish to give up the struggle, accepting failure as a decree of fate, right? Just because you fail, don't think fate has got the better of you. Another limiting belief that I've come across with many spiritual people is this is a false idea, by the way, and I've seen this again and again, is that if it doesn't feel good all the time, it means it's bad and it means it's fate and you should give up.
[00:17:21] Because we live in a narcissistic, selfish society where we've been programmed to believe that we should always be in pleasure and everything should always feel good all the time.
[00:17:36] And as soon as it doesn't feel good, then it's bad and we should give it up. Which is why, you know, it's easy to scroll TikTok and random nonsense for hours on end and eat junk food and watch shows, right? And that's why so many people are addicted to substances and entertainment. Because it feels good, right? But it ends up wrecking their life and they're not actually successful.
[00:18:04] So many times we will feel either some level of stress or some level of discomfort if we are going to do something meaningful.
[00:18:17] Nobody has achieved remarkable things in their life without any amount of discomfort, right? It's not going to be convenient to get everything you want all the time.
[00:18:30] So oftentimes people do something, then they fail, then they feel bad and they say, oh, it doesn't feel good and fate is against me. And then they give up. Let me go back to my phone and just look at what stuff's going on in the world.
[00:18:47] But that's not going to lead to success.
[00:18:50] So it's better to die struggling towards getting what you really want in your life, then abandon your efforts while there is still a possibility of accomplishing something more.
[00:19:02] Because even when death comes, your struggles must soon be renewed in another life.
[00:19:12] So if you understand you're a spiritual being and this is a great game and you can take multiple lives, it's a game, right? Kind of as many goes as as is destined.
[00:19:24] If you're struggling with something now, you're probably going to be in the same situation in the next life basically in a slightly different way once you grow up.
[00:19:32] So why not just deal with everything now? Because you're putting yourself in a better position for the future.
[00:19:41] This is basically the idea of like, if you're driving one car to go somewhere and then the car breaks down, you're still the same person. You just get another car and you carry on going to your destination, right? The car's different, but you're the same and you still want to get to the same place.
[00:20:05] So don't think that just because the car broke that you should therefore just give up. So while you've still got a chance, it's better to die struggling than to do it because you're going to carry on doing the same thing in the next life. Success or failure is just is the just result of what you've done in the past, right? So our current success or failure is a result of what we did in the past plus what you do now.
[00:20:36] So you should stimulate all the success thoughts of past lives until they are revitalized and able to overrule the influence of all failure tendencies in the present life.
[00:20:58] You know, throughout history, people have believed in reincarnation. It's a very, very recent thing that people don't believe in. Even the religions that supposedly don't believe in reincarnation now, they used to believe in it in the past and they removed it for the reasons of control. If you do your research about this. So reincarnation is something that people have been very aware of for a long time, and there's loads of documentaries about it where kids can remember their past lives and all sorts of things. But that is a huge topic which we're not going to get into. He's just assuming that you already have that awareness.
[00:21:36] So success or failure is the just result of what you've done in the past plus what you do now.
[00:21:47] So you should stimulate all the success thoughts of past lives until they are revitalized and able to overrule the influence of all failure tendencies in the present life.
[00:22:15] Very deep point, right? So what he's saying is that if you've had past lives and you've been successful in the past, which you probably have, if you've had past lives, you've had past success.
[00:22:25] Just imagine all your past successes. Imagine being highly successful previously, all the times you've had success, and just feel the power of that success, that winning, and you can just try and imagine what it is, right?
[00:22:42] Imagine you've had massive success in the past over and over again.
[00:22:47] Pull that into the now to overrule the influence of all failure tendencies now. Just pull it. It's like saying, here's the my past success, I'm grabbing That, and I'm just totally bathing in that. I'm allowing that to flood my being so that I reawaken that feeling of success. Now, the successful person may have had more serious difficulties to contend with than one who has failed, but the former trains himself to reject the thought of failure at all times, right? So even thinking about, oh, what if it doesn't work? What if this happens? That is not useful.
[00:23:38] The one who succeeded has trained himself or herself to reject the thought of failure at all times. I'm not interested. I'm focused on what I want. It is done. It is done. It is done. Success, Success. Success.
[00:23:54] You should transfer your attention from failure to.
[00:23:58] To success.
[00:24:00] From worry to calmness, from mental wanderings to concentration, from restlessness to peace, from peace to the divine bliss within.
[00:24:17] So you should transfer your attention. So in other words, you have the power of attention. You can focus on love, you can focus on fear here, you can focus on the sun.
[00:24:26] You can focus on evil monsters living in the basement, right? You can focus on anything you want. Focus on cheese sandwich, pizzas, coffee, you know, salt, lamps, plants.
[00:24:44] Right? Whatever you want.
[00:24:45] Governments, the sky. Right? You can focus anywhere.
[00:24:50] So transfer your attention from failure to success.
[00:24:54] Transfer your attention from worry to calmness, from mental wanderings floating around to concentration, from restlessness to peace.
[00:25:13] And then when you're feeling peace, go into divine bliss within.
[00:25:20] When you attain this state of self realization that you are divine bliss, your purpose, the purpose of your life will have been gloriously fulfilled.
[00:25:31] Because at the end of the day, when you have divine bliss, what else do you need?
[00:25:39] Very deep. Let's just read it once through and just take this to heart. Just think, how can I bring this into my life?
[00:25:47] Failures should arouse determination. So next time you have a failure, let's say you fail at something today. Just bring this into your heart. Because it's guaranteed we're going to have failures along the way. In fact, we're going to fail more often than we're going to succeed. In many cases, major successes in life come through the door of failure. We have to go through that door again and again and again until we learn all these things.
[00:26:11] Even failure should act as stimulants to your willpower and to your material and spiritual growth.
[00:26:18] When you have failed in any project, it's useful and helpful to analyze every factor in the situation in order to eliminate all chances in the future that you might repeat the same errors. Don't repeat the same errors once, once more, once you know what they are.
[00:26:40] The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
[00:26:46] The bludgeon of circumstances may bruise you, but keep your head high. Always try once more, no matter how many times you failed.
[00:26:56] Fight when you think you can fight no longer, or when you think that you've already done your best, or until your efforts are crowned with success.
[00:27:08] A little story may make this point clear.
[00:27:11] A and B were fighting after a long time. A said to himself, I cannot go on any longer.
[00:27:19] But B thought, just one more punch and he gave it, and down went A.
[00:27:29] You must be like that.
[00:27:31] Give a last punch.
[00:27:36] Use the unconquerable power of will to overcome all difficulties in life.
[00:27:42] New efforts after failure bring true growth.
[00:27:48] But they must be well planned and charged with increasing intensity of attention and with dynamic willpower.
[00:27:56] Suppose you have failed so far.
[00:28:00] It will be foolish to give up the struggle, accepting failure as a decree of fate.
[00:28:05] It's better to die struggling than to abandon your efforts while there is still a possibility of accomplishing something more.
[00:28:13] For even when death comes, your struggles must soon be renewed in another life.
[00:28:21] Success or failure is the just result of what you've done in the past plus what you do now.
[00:28:31] So you should stimulate all success thought of past lives until they are revitalized and able to overrule the influence of all failure tendencies in the present life.
[00:28:45] The successful person may have had more serious difficulties to contend with than one who's failed.
[00:28:52] But the former trains himself to reject the thought of failure at all times.
[00:28:58] You should transfer your attention from failure to success, from worry to calmness, from mental wanderings to concentration, from restlessness to peace, and from peace to divine bliss within.
[00:29:26] When you attain this state of self realization, the purpose of your life will have been gloriously fulfilled.
[00:29:36] And so it is.
[00:29:40] Success is guaranteed.
[00:29:43] Now you know what to do if you fail. It's not really failure. Just learn from it.
[00:29:48] Apply these methods. Give it one last punch, one last time.
[00:29:53] Focus on success.
[00:29:55] Reignite that power within. Stimulate yourself and just keep moving forward.
[00:30:03] Divine bliss talk to you soon.
[00:30:08] Many, many blessings.
