Regardless of how much you plan, how much up front work you do, or how many alternate plans you put in place, FAILURE will happen at some point. You can’t stop it, because you can’t plan for every eventuality, and you can’t control all variables in all situations, and quite frankly, you are not omnipotent. But it’s our MINDSET and REACTION to that inevitability that defines our ULTIMATE OUTCOME.
Another wonderful nugget of wisdom from John C Maxwell’s “Failing Forward” is that not only will you fail sometimes, but that it’s only a true failure if your mindset allows it to be. If you see the “failure” differently, the way that successful people do, you realize that what occurred was simply a SETBACK or a LESSON on the journey. If you focus on the lesson, to find the diamond that may be in the rough, then like scales falling from your eyes, you see that there was no failure event. To label it as a true failure and as an event…that’s mindset. Change your perspective, and that changes your mindset.
Failure can NEVER be an event or a destination if you don’t allow it to be. Until you breath your last, you are still on your journey to achieving your goals. When this perspective clicks in, it liberates your mind and allows the growth you need.
When you look at the life and careers of some of the most successful people on earth, you will learn that it’s their perspective on failure that ultimately moved them forward.
One of Steve Jobs most notorious setbacks was the Lisa computer. It was an abject disaster commercially, and led to the firing of Steve at Apple. It was a disaster due mainly to:
- Technical and engineering problems
- Ridiculous cost
- Awful marketing campaign
Now, regardless if you are an Apple lover or hater, what would some people say that the perceptions of Apple products are today (or maybe a few years ago):
- Excellent engineering
- Not the cheapest, but customers don’t mind paying the price
- Cool or for “creative types”
These perceptions may or may not be true, but it honestly doesn’t matter. What happened? Basically Steve learned a pile of lessons from the “failure” that was the Lisa. He looked at the Lisa project as a setback, not a failure event, and mined all of the lessons that he could. Then he worked on correcting those issues as he moved forward. And guess what, he didn’t get it right directly after the Lisa either. He got fired from Apple and started NeXT. NeXT wasn’t a commercially “successful” company by itself, but more lessons were learned, and he actually turned it into a great success by selling it back to Apple. All of the engineering that was developed at NeXT formed the core of what would be the new line of Macintosh computers at his new Apple. So was NeXT a failure? Heck no. He was still working through the process of finding the lessons in the setbacks, but he never quit. And ultimately, that’s how its done. That’s how success happens.
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Have a great day!
