Picture is mine, shot by Excel imagery.
Someone once said failure is the mother of all evil. I disagree. I do not know of anyone who loves to fail, but I have not yet found anyone who succeeded without failing. I've learned to believe that failure is a necessary acquaintance we must meet while pushing our way up.
As a person, I've failed at many things at different times in my life, but two of the most difficult failures I had to deal with were in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, I took part in an annual cake decorating competition organized by the national body of bakers in my country called ICES. I remember I was so excited about the competition because I loved baking, and I always wanted to show the world how passionate I was about it. I informed my family, invited all my friends, and spent almost everything I had in preparation for the event. Alas! On the day of the competition, I was announced as the last position when the results came out. It was so bad that when the judges were giving the awards to the winners, one of them asked the audience if I should be sent back to a baking school and they all screamed yes! I died.
It was the most painful moment of my life because this was me, who had believed I had covered some distance in my baking expertise. It was so embarrassing to be told to go back to a baking school. I cried a lot. I didn't know how to handle the disappointment and all the feelings of failure I was experiencing. I considered quitting baking completely, and lost motivation for weeks! But after a while, with a lot of encouragement from my family and friends, I enrolled in more professional baking classes and began to work on my baking skills again.
The next year, I went again, this time for a competition called Cake Mania. That was 2023. I remember I put together a team of friends for my social media publicity, hosted a cake-tasting party for people to come and have a taste of my cakes; bought tickets for people so they could come watch the show and support me, held picnics, practiced the selected cake designs tediously (they were selected by the judges). I even fell ill during that period because of the amount of strain I exerted on my body. However, when D-Day came, and the winners were announced after the competition, I wasn't among the first three again, but I was awarded a compensation prize as one of the bakers who impressed the judges. I still felt bad. But something had changed. Even though I felt bad, my resolve to succeed had grown stronger. Have you ever heard of the proverb, “The root of a tree gets stronger during times of harsh winds”? That was me. I didn't cry a tear. I had learned that if I was going to succeed in my career or my passion as a baker, I was going to have to dig my feet in and accept a lot of pummeling from failures and all sorts of temporary setbacks. Was I hurt that I failed again? Yes! But I realized they were all eye-openers to the need for more self-improvement. I remember telling myself, “Scaling through all these is probably what made all those bakers you admire so much become who they are.”
And yes! Today, I can beat my chest and say I am ten times better than I was because I didn't just get more professional training, I also took business classes and got better at turning my passion for baking into a business. Today, I have a business to my name running smoothly with clientele within and outside my state, and I have trained many people myself between then and now. I always tell people that I believe baking is part of my “calling” in life, and I'm going to fulfill it no matter what. So for me, failure is just a necessary part of the journey if I must succeed at anything. Does it hurt? Oh yes! But one must set one's face as a flint and decide that if one believes in anything, one must go for it till the end.
All pictures are mine.
