* Note: This post is part of an ongoing series in which I am sharing the entire contents of a currently unpublished book I wrote last year, entitled: unBelievable: How to Get Unbelievable Results By Giving Up Believable Ideas. Review my blog's archives or do a search for unbelievable to see all previous posts.
Failure Only Feels Like Failure When You Don't Use It Successfully
- I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward. - Thomas Edison
- The way to succeed is to double your error rate. - Thomas J. Watson
- Only he who does nothing makes a mistake.- French proverb
- Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Sir Winston Churchill
- I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan
- Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Beckett
- Fall seven times, stand up eight. - Japanese Proverb
- Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. - Robert F Kennedy
Believable Ideas
- The more often you fail, the bigger failure you become.
- The idea of making mistakes and looking like an idiot isn't something anyone should have to endure.
- Failure should be avoided at all cost.
- Failing is devastating and hard to live down!
- If I'm not absolutely sure I can succeed, I'm not even going to try.
The key to success - everyone is searching for it, and there seems to be an untold number of strategies on how to find it, but when you cut through all the clutter and noise, achieving success comes down to nothing more than your ability to take the right actions for experiencing the best results.
It's not any more complicated than that!
So when you break it down, success relies on two main factors:
- Your ability - The confidence and motivation needed to take action
- Taking the right actions - The knowledge to do the right things when you take action
Knowing this, doesn't it make sense that if you can find a way to boost your confidence and motivation to act, as well as improve your knowledge to do the right things, that you'll experience greater success at reaching your goals than you do now?
Ironically, one of the best ways to accomplish both of these objectives is to experience failure!
In a moment, I'm going to explain to you exactly how failure enhances your ability to succeed, but first, let's make sure your perception of failure serves you, instead of draining you of energy and self-respect.
When most people try something and fail, they often focus strictly on the bad end-result they experience, and how horrible it makes them feel. Failure often brings with it a whole catalog of faulty reasonings that play in their head, like a broken record:
- Other people seem to do this effortlessly, but apparently I can't!
- I'm not cut out for this!
- Why should I waste my time, trying to do this again, if I'm not going to get the result I want?
- I should have known better than to expect things to go right!
- This is ridiculous, and I feel like a real loser!
Do any of those sound familiar to you? We've all said them to ourselves to a degree at some point in our lives - that's pretty normal. The problem is when you do it all the time, especially at a level that makes you mad, perhaps furious, or even outright defeated.
Whenever you fail at something, the bad result you get should never be the focus of the experience - it's done, over, and dwelling on it does you little good. The process that created the failure, and what you can learn from it - THAT should be your focus. There are always specific reasons why you experience failure, and it has little to do with you 'being a loser.'
So failures should never be used as opportunities to beat yourself up (if you're doing this, stop it!), you need to shift your focus so you see them as opportunities to learn and grow. Not just some of them - ALL of them!
With a new perspective of failure installed in your brain, let's now look at how evaluating the experience of each failure actually boosts your confidence and motivation to act, as well as improves your knowledge to do the right things, as we mentioned earlier were the keys achieving greater success.
First, how can something like failure be a confidence booster? It just doesn't seem possible, does it?
Well, each time you at least try to do something, even if you fail, you see with your own eyes that your world didn't fall apart as you may have thought it would in your imagination. This simple awareness drains the power from any crippling fear that may have been holding you back, and instead it builds your confidence and motivation to try something new again, and again, and again.
It's the melting away of this fear that results in more and more action, which eventually leads to more success.
When you think about it, like everyone else in this world, you've already had plenty of failures in your life up to this point. Despite that:
- Are you friendless?
- Do people look at you constantly and laugh?
- Are you homeless?
- Are you dead?
Unless your failure was related to committing a crime, I doubt that any of these are true. These devastating and humiliating kinds of scenarios are what we play out in our minds, but rarely do we see them play out in reality, no matter how big we may fail.
You'll never benefit from this kind of awareness, and the motivational feeling of liberation that comes with it, if you never at least attempt to do things that could possiblly lead to failure.
Now let's consider how failure helps give you the knowledge you need to do the right things when you DO act!
Let me start by saying I believe that people often put too much faith in 'book learning' alone. Now, I'm not saying that gaining knowledge from books, seminars, DVDs, and other people isn't important - it definitely IS! But unless you're a prodigy (and most of us aren't), it's unrealistic to believe you're going to get head-knowledge about how to do something you've never done before, and immediately be able to go out and do it right the first time.
Head knowledge (advice, strategies, and tips) can only take you so far in the learning and growing process, no matter how much of it you have. The best teacher is experience, which you can only get by taking action, and discovering for yourself what does and doesn't work, which involves failing from time-to-time - some times a lot!
You see, taking action engages your mind and body in a level of learning that head-knowledge can't compare with. And even if you fail in the process of taking action (which you will), you discover for yourself, at a very deep and impressionable level, what to do differently to get better results the next time you try.
As a matter of fact, one of the benefits of taking action (and failing) is that you begin seeing how the world works in a way that you never could experience otherwise. It gives you an incredible sense of clarity that, as a result, enables you to do more of the right things, more often!
So, in a nutshell, you want to:
Act -> Fail -> Evaluate -> Improve -> Act -> Fail/Succeed?
And you want to keep doing this cycle until you succeed at whatever you wish to accomplish.
Before wrapping up this chapter, I should clarify one important point: Embracing the idea of failure DOESN'T mean you intentionally do dumb things that have been proven by others to be a bad idea. Common sense should make it abundantly clear that there are some things you don't have to personally experience for yourself to know that they should be avoided at all cost.
As you've learned, experiencing failure may not always feel great initially, but it does have a lot of long-term benefits. It teaches you how to do the right things, and it slowly eliminates any anxieties you may have that prevent you from taking action for fear of making a mistake (or many mistakes).
In the end, you need to realize that a failure is only a failure if you fail to see it as nothing more than a failure. Think about that for a moment!
Summary
- Achieving success comes down to nothing more than your ability to take the right actions for experiencing the best results.
- If you can find a way to boost your confidence and motivation to act, as well as improve your knowledge to do the right things, then you'll experience greater success at reaching your goals than you do now. Ironically, one of the best ways to accomplish both of these objectives is to experience failure!
- Whenever you fail at something, the bad result you get should never be the focus of the experience. The process that created the failure, and what you can learn from it - THAT should be your focus.
- Each time you at least try to do something, even if you fail, you see with your own eyes that your world didn't fall apart as you may have thought it would in your imagination. This simple awareness drains the power from any crippling fear that may have been holding you back, and instead it builds your confidence and motivation to try something new again, and again, and again.
- Head knowledge (advice, strategies, and tips) can only take you so far in the learning and growing process, no matter how much of it you have. The best teacher is experience, which you can only get by taking action, and discovering for yourself what does and doesn't work, which involves failing from time-to-time - some times a lot!
- You want to: Act -> Fail -> Evaluate -> Improve -> Act -> Fail/Succeed?
- Embracing the idea of failure DOESN'T mean you intentionally do dumb things that have been proven by others to be a bad idea. Common sense should make it abundantly clear that there are some things you don't have to personally experience for yourself to know they should be avoided at all cost.
Next: You Need To Be Reminded More Than You Need To Be Instructed
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