Are you willing to fail at the point of success?
No! Well you should be.
Failure is what leads to success; it is proof of action. All your efforts that lead to failure should be praised and rewarded, because they are moving you in the direction of success.
In all areas of life, the people who move forward with progress are the ones who are willing to fail, because they know that enough failure leads to success. They know that success is delayed with every failure, not prevented.
The only way to fail for sure is to stop trying. If you fail twice and give up, now you can be sure that you will not succeed. But it is you who puts the guarantee, not the situation.
The key is to keep going.
Thomas Edison greedily sought failure, knowing that with each failure he was a little closer to a solution. The faster he failed, the sooner he got to the prize.
“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” – -Winston Churchill
When the results don’t go the way you want, it’s time to review what happened and then determine a new, adjusted plan of action.
There is a success plan called plan, do, review, which is self-explanatory and simple. But this basic process, repeated over and over again, will get you closer and closer to the desired result. Implement this simple process into everything you do, and you’ll see two things. You will begin to embrace the natural process of discovery and understanding, and you will see success.
Fear is one of our worst enemies when it comes to success. Many people allow fear to overcome them in two ways.
One, the fear of failure early on prevents them from even getting started. They are so worried about what could go wrong that even getting started is too difficult. Second, they allow the fear of continued failure to become stronger than their convictions and drive. They allow their fears to mix with worry to sabotage their intentions.
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – -Paulo Coelho
So what does it take to overcome these fears?
1- Determination: having a very strong drive and focusing on the desired result helps to stay strong through adversity. In the classic book “Think and Grow Rich,” Napoleon Hill said that he needed to develop a burning desire to succeed. When this burning desire becomes strong enough, it will nullify the disappointments of temporary setbacks, giving you the drive to persist.
2- Perception: a key trait of people who can accept failure and overcome it is that they do not see failure as the end. Rather, they see it as a learning opportunity, a point to evaluate, adjust, and start over. The way you perceive something and interpret it determines how you allow it to affect you. And this is certainly the case with the fear of failure. The person who can continue through setbacks is one who sees them as momentary, not permanent.
3- Self-concept: the way you see yourself in terms of your right, ability and dignity to do something can affect your confidence behind your activities. It is very helpful to get to a point where you know you are worthy of the desired goal. You must know that you are worthy like anyone else and that delays and failures along the way are not signs that you are not worthy. They are simply the means of discovery that everyone experiences. Work on yourself, develop a strong and high self esteem and you will be able to weather the storm.
If you want something strong enough, you should be willing to stick with it to the point where there are no more chances of failure.
Failure is really a good thing. The people who fail the most are the ones who win the most. I’m sure you’ve heard before that Babe Ruth with the record for home runs from him also holds the record for most strikeouts. How can this be? Well, more strikeouts show more opportunities for home runs. If I hadn’t had every opportunity to keep trying home runs, I never would have hit them.
More tries mean more strikeouts and more home runs. Thomas Edison used this principle too, he was relentless and conducted experiments at a rapid pace to get through the learning and adjusting phase quickly. He knew that this was how the process worked. There was no master conspiracy against him making things more difficult, just the natural process.
Both men knew that success was simply deferred, not impossible.
“Failure should be our teacher, not our gravedigger. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only if we say nothing, do nothing, and we are nothing”. – -Denis Waitley
Don’t be angry, don’t be disappointed, keep going.
Focus your sights on the target and don’t let failures stop you. View things that don’t go as planned as delayed success, success that is only delayed for a while. Don’t let failure be guaranteed by quitting. Success is there, you just need to properly align with it and this may take a few or even many tries. Are you determined to have a determination stronger than setbacks?
It all comes down to choice, are you going to succumb to obstacles or are you going to take control of your personal growth and choose to learn from failure? Will you continue to readjust and continue to do so until you eliminate all the reasons why not?
“I think one of the characteristics of the human race, possibly the one most responsible for its course of evolution, is that it has grown by responding creatively to failure.” Glen Seaborg – American scientist and Nobel laureate
Copyright 2005 John Halderman