Geniuses fail too

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison

Imagine if Thomas Edison had given in to failure…we would still be living in darkness.  If Henry Ford had given up we would still be riding on horseback…if Michael Jordan had hung his boots up…Nike would have been just another sports brand.

If you look back at all of the most inspirational innovators, sportsman, geniuses & icons throughout history they all share a common thread – they simply don’t believe in failure.

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.” Henry Ford

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six 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.” Michael Jordan

Successful people understand that failure is a pre-requisite for success and the sooner you buy into that the quicker you’ll reach personal success & happiness.  Each failure you make is one step closer to success – as long as you learn from your mistakes of course! The definition of insanity is ‘to do the same things over and over again and expect change’.  So it’s not good enough to simply keep failing at the same things – the purpose of failure is to become more wise through experience and only by learning what doesn’t work, can we learn what does work.

Simple Life Strategy: dealing with failure:

1. Reframe your situation – there will always be a worse off situation that you can think of and this will make you immediately feel better (“At least X didn’t happen”)
2. Analyse why you failed and how you can take these learnings forward to bring you one step closer to your goals (don’t focus on ‘failing’ – focus on what you would have changed)
3. Always ask for feedback – and don’t think of it as criticism – but invaluable information to help you succeed and move forward
4. Don’t make the mistake of judging yourself negatively based on your actions. Just because you have taken action that has failed – doesn’t mean you are a failure. You are not your work. This is simply one aspect of who you are.
5. Success is judged not on how quickly you succeed but how quickly you recover, so pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep going. As Confucious said:

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”

So model your great ancestors and learn to love failure!

If you’re keen to understand exactly how to overcome your personal failures using techniques created by the most successful people on the planet, then contact me to find out more about my coaching programs.

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