Reject Failure to Receive Success

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THIS…

Many people who have not yet been a “success” (defined as, “the favorable and prosperous termination of anything attempted”) believe that successful people are those who strategically and methodically make the right decisions. After all, that would make sense wouldn’t it? Instead, I want to suggest that in order for YOU to succeed you will need to fail. You will need to learn how to reject failure to receive success.

If making the right decision, at the right time, in the right way was the key to success then your intelligence, pedigree, and talent would decide on whether you could become a success. There would be little hope for the rest of us (especially me a man of average intelligence, little talent, and no pedigree).

There once was a man (this is a true story)…who after losing his job ran for a state legislative position and lost. After losing he opened his own business which failed. One year later his first love died which was followed by his nervous breakdown a year later. He was finally elected as a state legislator. Thereafter, he was nominated for the position of Speaker of the Legislature for the State, which he lost.

He decides to run for a position in the U.S. House of Representatives for his state and is defeated for nomination by his political party. In the next election cycle he runs again and is elected to Congress.

In the next election cycle he loses his renomination to Congress, attempts to become a land officer for which he is rejected, and is defeated in an attempt to be elected to a position in the U.S. Senate. 2 years later he attempts to secure a nomination for Vice President of the U.S. and is defeated. In the next election cycle he runs for U.S. Senate and is defeated again.

All of the above failures occurred over a 26 year period in this man’s life. Would you consider this man a success? Well the story did not end there…

IN 1860 HE RUNS FOR THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND WINS…HIS NAME WAS ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Abraham Lincoln knew how to “fail forward.”

HOW TO “FAIL FORWARD”…

• Own your failure:

When we fail there can be a tendency to “justify” it. After all, it hurts to fail. It is a natural tendency to avoid pain so we often try to reduce the pain by “rationalizing” why we failed. If our rationalizing is “rational lies” we are doing a great disservice to ourselves.

However, it does not mean that if you try to understand why and how you failed you are doing the same thing as rationalizing or making excuses. It is important to understand, as best you can, why and how your failure happened so you can make the corrections necessary. You own it when you take full responsibility for the consequences of your failure.

• Study why you failed:

You will need to take a long, hard look at your failure. Not only do we like to rationalize our failures but we also like to discard them. It can be an “ostrich effect” where we blind ourselves from the truth of our error. How can you correct that which you will not look at? What do you think the likelihood of repeating the error again would be?

Admitting the error is not enough. You will need to identify deficiencies, judgement lapses, triggers (called cueing), and blind spots. This process is facilitated if you seek the advice of a mentor (click here to see my post on mentorship) who will be particularly helpful in identifying “blind spots” for you.

The study of your failure is important as a data gathering mechanism. You cannot hope to initiate proper corrective action if you have not disclosed all the facets of your failure.

Yet and still, you should not stop at failure analysis. True success goes further…

• Learn the skills necessary to not fail in the same way again:

Perhaps the number one reason for failure is a lack of knowledge. Since there is no one on earth that has all knowledge it is axiomatic that all will fail at some point in their life. There are likely some informational things that you will need to learn.

Some might say, “I think the number one reason for failure is lack of character.” Well, I would say, that even then it would be important that you have the knowledge that you lack character as the cause for your failure.

Whatever you lack you will need to obtain. You will need a strategy to do this…

• Initiate a strategy to not fail in the same way again:

A mentor would be very helpful in addressing this phase of “failing forward.” It will be very difficult for you to develop a plan for improvement if you have never done it before. A well-chosen mentor will be more experienced, more objective, and will increase your accountability.

You will likely not be able to change everything that needs to be changed all at once. This will be a progressive process. Need I say that this is also not a smooth process? Dealing with human beings is a messy process…especially when it is yourself.

• Re-engage in another project that requires risk:

If you have fallen off your horse you need to, “get back in the saddle.” The longer you wait to re-engage in your next risk taking endeavor (by the way this is also called faith) the harder it will be to do so. Here again, people like to avoid pain.

Faith can be defined as, “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” Your next project that has risk should not be something that has an easily predictable result. If you can see the result it does not require faith.

CLOSING REMARKS…

“FAR BETTER IT IS TO DARE MIGHTY THINGS, TO WIN GLORIOUS TRIUMPHS EVEN THOUGH CHECKERED BY FAILURE, THAN TO RANK WITH THOSE POOR SPIRITS WHO NEITHER ENJOY NOR SUFFER MUCH BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN THE GRAY TWILIGHT THAT KNOWS NEITHER VICTORY NOR DEFEAT.”

United States President Theodore Roosevelt

Success after failure is similar to Newton’s third law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The transfer of negative energy to positive occurs through the processes that we talked about above: Own, study, learn, initiate, and re-engage.

You will become a success when you embrace the wisdom of failure.

NOW GO FAIL AT SOMETHING…

Wishing you much joy and success,

Jeff