How Do You Define Success vs. Failure?
As I sat in my recliner (yes, I work in my office in a recliner!) this morning I began to think about two of my favorite subjects. SUCCESS and FAILURE.
You see as a Success Coach I often have clients that come in all in a tizzy because they have been working on something and it didn't turn out quite the way they thought it should, an in their mind they failed.
Well, in all honesty nothing could be further from the truth. And it is at that time that I have to remind them of two things.
First I hold up a copy of my latest book "Failure Is NOT an Option" and ask them if they have ever read it. Now okay that is a shameless way to promote the book, but if they haven't read my book, and don't buy into what I am teaching, then why are they coming to me for coaching in the first place.
But, the real reason I hold up the book is simply to make a point and lead into the ensuing discussion that must take place at that point. That there is really no such thing as failure.
Now to some that may seem like a crazy statement, and you might be saying to yourself right now, "but Dr. Carl, I have failed at this or that in my life, and I know that failure does in fact exist!"
Let me put your mind at ease if I can. If you have experienced a perceived failure in your life, and in the process you were able to understand what you did wrong so that you would not make the same mistake again, have you failed? Of course not. what yu have done is had a learning experience. And whenever you learn it is impossible to consider that experience as a failure.
I am sure that you are well aware of who Thomas Edison was. He is erroneously credited with inventing the incandescent lightbullb. Now I say erroneously because the original incandescent light bulb was in fact invented by a gentleman by the name of Humphrey Davy an English chemist, but his design was not practical as it burned out rapidly. What Edison and his team did in fact do was perfect the filament that allowed the lightbulb to burn much longer before the filament actually blew up.
But during the process of perfecting the incandescent light bulb it is rumored that Edison an his team had conucted over 10,000 experiments. Each one a failure in the eyes of the innocent bystander, but not to the determined Edison. When questioned once about his string of failed attempts he simply replied, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
The point I am trying to make is that failure does not exist anywhere but in our own minds, once we accept it as so.
No matter what you are doing in your life if you pursue it with the ambition of the great Edison then you can't possibly fail.
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