Food for Thought #15: Dress Rehearsal

byAJTrimble1

9.1K followers

5 years ago

Today’s Food for Thought was inspired by a conversation I had with @Ayebogbon who is totally rocking it… give him follow :-)

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Failure is just dress rehearsal for success”?

I can’t remember the first time I heard it, but I love that quote. So many of us get caught up with this unachievable idea of perfection. And often we fail to take action on something because of our fear of failure.

And yet, what most don’t realize is that successful people literally fail their way to the top.

I F’d Up

When I worked in law enforcement, I went from the typical minimum wage security officer to attending the police academy, working as a street officer, becoming a Corporal, and being promoted to Sergeant, all in under five years. To put this into perspective, many departments won’t even consider a candidate for Sergeant until they have at least 10 years on the job, sometimes longer. So how did I accomplish this so quickly?

What I always told the rookie officers was this:

If your definition of success is these stripes, then why am I more “successful” than you? Only two reasons. I’ve been here longer (i.e. time). And more importantly, I’ve screwed up more crap than you!

Online Marketing

So, what does this have to do with building niche sites? EVERYTHING.

The only reason that any of us so-called “gurus” – whatever the hell that loaded word means – are more successful than a new online marketer is those same two reasons. We’ve simply been at it a bit longer, and we’ve made waaayyyy more mistakes than anyone else.

No one is born knowing how to build and monetize a website. There are pioneers out there like Kyle and Carson that went before us, breaking new ground, and enduring all the arrows along the way. But their failures (sorry, guys) are what built Wealthy Affiliate from the ground up. And their current failures are what's building it for tomorrow.

Likewise, it is my failures in business, both offline and online, that got me to where I am today. Same for yourself. Your life at this very moment is the result of all the so-called failures you've experienced before.

So don’t see failure as, well… failure. See it as merely feedback. You didn’t fail at something; you simply learned another way that it didn’t work. But that’s not a negative. That’s valuable information that you can use to tweak things and make them better. It is only through this constant pattern of failure that you achieve never-ending improvement.

So that everyone can see that it's not just them, please share with the community one of your dress rehearsal moments.