How do you handle failure?

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All of us will experience failure at various points in our lives. We will fail in our business. We will fail our supervisors in the workplace. We will fail the Lord in our relationship with Him. We will fail our spouses and our children. We will fail our parents. We will fail our friends. We will fail those that we lead. Failure is not a matter of "if" but when. We are all flawed, fallen human beings. There will be train wrecks in all of our lives.

The key to moving past failure is our response. We can do one of 2 things:

1. Continue living in failure.
2. Learn from the failure, make necessary life changes, and rise higher.

Leadership guru John Maxwell talks about the need for us to "Fail Forward." It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to admit we have made a mistake. A person of high moral character not only admits to making a mistake, but also takes the time for introspection, analyzing the problem, and then making the necessary changes that need to take place in order to move to a better place in our lives.

Admitting there's a problem is difficult. Making the necessary corrections in order to fail forward can be even more difficult.

You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. (Psalm 18:35)