We’re All Failures…At Least the Best of Us Are

We’re all failures…At least the best of us are.

– J M Barrie

Fear’s sister, and sometimes siamese twin is failure. They are attached at the hip because one of the greatest purveyors of our fear is failure. Fear of failure causes us the greatest resistance, holds us back the most, and keeps us in our shell when we could be busting out.

While in the “old me” mindset, I would look at those who are having success and assume it was because they:

have more talent
have more opportunity
know someone
are lucky

But the “new me” has realized that this is just not true. This thought process is just rationalization and its what feeds the fear.

During my journey, I found that those having success usually have a very different attitude towards failure. In fact, their attitude is the EXACT OPPOSITE than most of us! They embrace the failure and realize that its part of the process of moving forward.

At what are you trying to succeed?

Sports?

Here’s Jordan’s mindset on failure:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Creative Endeavors?

Thomas Edison tried 10000 times before he perfected the electric light bulb. Here’s the way he thought of failure:

“I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10000 ways that don’t work.”

Business?

How about Henry Ford, who failed at several businesses before he started the Ford Motor Company:

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

What else?

This could go on and on. Google will overwhelm you with quotes and stories just like this. But here’s what you need to know…the key is in your ATTITUDE and your MINDSET with regards to failing. John C Maxwell says in his book “Failing Forward“ :

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perspective of and response to failure.

Aha! Change your perspective, and then change your response!

How do we do that? Well, like with most mindset issues, the first step is awareness of our conscious thoughts. Our subconscious will follow the conscious. When we can recognize from where we start, and stand up in the meeting and say, “Hi, my name is John, and I have a mindset problem….”, we can move forward and work on getting to where we want to be.

Constructive and Non-Constructive Failure Attitudes

From that same book, Mr. Maxwell gives us some examples of non-constructive and constructive attitudes toward failure. Find your weakness in the non-constructive list, and start moving it towards an attitude on the constructive list.

Non-Constructive:

Blaming others
Repeating the same mistakes
Expecting to always fail, or to never fail
Thinking to yourself “I am a failure”
And the grandaddy of them all: Quitting…Quitting is the demarkation line in the sand. You have not actually failed until you’ve quit.

Constructive:

Always take responsibility…start by looking in the mirror.
Learning from your mistakes
Knowing and embracing that failure is part of progress
Positive attitude
Taking new risks (because you no longer fear the failure)
And the grandaddy of constructive thoughts on failure: Persevering…Perseverance is the ultimate counteraction to failure. There is no ultimate failure with perseverance.

We’re All Failures

We’re all failures..at some point, and at some things. I’ve realized, based on both history of the world and my own history, that a constructive attitude towards failure is one of the keys to success. When we change our attitude towards failure, and start to embrace it, that’s when we start to move forward.

Go out there and FAIL!

We’re All Failures…At Least the Best of Us Are