Ask yourself this- is it possible to succeed all of the time? If you can manage to do everything absolutely perfectly, will you achieve your dreams?
Maybe you’re feeling pretty confident about this and your answer is positive. Well, I wish I had your positivity- truly.
Based on my experience, it’s always good to try your best but perfection doesn’t exist. You can try and try and try to get all your ducks in a row but the unexpected will happen.
Sure, some people are smarter in business and with their ideas than others—that’s a given. There are people out there who you admire who always seem to have things together.
I, too, admire those people. It’s hard not to feel envious. Some might even be envious of the success I’ve had in my life.
But, you know what? Every single person out there has failed. I’ve failed over and over again. Nothing is as it appears to be on the surface. Those people you admire who never seem to fail simply don’t allow you to see their failure. That’s really what it is.
It’s a fact that you’re going to fail. You may as well embrace it.
No, I don’t say this to be negative or to get you down in any way at all. I say this because it’s actually a good thing to fail.
The most successful people in the world are also those who’ve failed the most. That’s the honest truth. Successful people fail more than unsuccessful people.
The Fear of Failure
For some people, they just can’t bring themselves to take the right kind of action because they’re so terrified of failure. They sit back and learn and study but never actually implement because the fear of failure holds them back.
Here’s the thing—not trying is actually the failure. Sure, you might fail when you actually try. You might have setbacks and experience mistakes. But, you’ll be a lot further along than you ever would have been if you’d never tried at all, right?
And every failure you have when you do try is one step closer to success. You learn things from failure. In fact, you should be turning every failure over and over again, examining it for what you did right and what you can do better next time.
Successful people don’t let you see them sweat. But they do, indeed, sweat. Unless they have a computer-like mentality, they also have a fear of failure. The difference is that they push through anyway.
They don’t let failure or the possibility of failure paralyze them.
They use that fear of failure to drive them to bigger and better things. They learn from the failures they do have and use whatever happens as a result of their action to better their business all the way around.
It’s easier to deal with a fear of failure if you know there’s some good that can come from it, no matter what happens. The more you put your eye on the prize and push through failure, the further away the fear of failure will seem.
Failure Is Your Friend
You’ve heard this phrase over and over again. I’m fond of saying it myself because it’s such an important concept to grasp for every person in business. Failure is your friend.
Repeat it to yourself and really think about what it means.
To me, this phrase means that failure is actually a good thing. It’s something that can help you do better and be better. It can help you achieve a level of success you wouldn’t have had otherwise. That’s a pretty great thing, right?
To fail is to learn. So many people focus on studying business materials and trying to figure out what magic successful people have managed to get their hands on. What they don’t realize is that the real learning comes from doing. It comes from failing.
You have to let yourself fail. In fact, you should start to look forward to failing because that means you’re one step closer to true success.
Failing With Grace
If you accept that failure is a good thing, you can finally start to give yourself permission to take action.
It’s not only important to accept that failure is your friend, by the way. It will do you no good to fail and then shrug it off.
It’s important to fail with grace. Then, move forward using the new data you have.
You’ve tried something and it didn’t work. What has that taught you? What will you try next time? How can you transform this failure into a success?
Are you sort of on the right path or are you way off the mark?
Have a plan for failure. As objectively as you can, take a look at what went wrong and right and keep moving forward.
Since failure is now your friend and you know how to fail with grace, you can now move forward, dust yourself off, and use what you know to achieve a massive amount of success next time.
… Or maybe not. Maybe you won’t achieve success next time. But, you know what? That’s just fine. You might fail 10 times. Each time, you’ll objectively analyze what went wrong and right.
Soon enough, you’ll achieve that magical success you’ve always admired in others. Other people will start to look at your “overnight success” with envy.
I Realize This Isn’t Always Easy
This is one of those things that’s a lot easier said than done, right? It’s one thing for me to tell you that it’s okay, beneficial even, to accept failure as your friend.
It’s another thing altogether to put it into practice.
The next time you fail, you might feel like putting your head in your hands and weeping or throwing your hands in the air to wail.
That’s okay. Just keep your eye on the prize. Know that this too, shall pass.
Then, follow through with your plan for moving forward. That’s one of the best reasons why you should set up a plan for how to use your failures for the betterment of your business.
Come up with a checklist for yourself- a system for how to transform your failures into success and learn from them.
When you plan for failure and know that it’s inevitable, it will be so much easier for you to bounce back more easily than ever.
Embrace Failure
Embrace failure and you’ll automatically be in league with the most successful people in the world. Fail, learn, dust yourself off, smile, and succeed.
Understanding that failure is your friend is one of those things that can catapult you to a level of success you’ve only dreamed of until now.
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