You know what the biggest obstacle to winning is? It is a failure. But not just failure itself, because failure is something that everyone must face. In fact, the only difference between winners and losers – is that the losers rarely fail. Yeah, you heard that correct. They never fail, because they are so afraid of failing – they never try. And they are so busy feeling jealous about all the success that others around them are achieving, they can’t even see all the failure going on behind the scenes.
Winners are failing all the time. It isn’t even unreasonable to fail 72 times before finally succeeding just once. Success cannot exist without failure, and so you should learn to become a lot more comfortable with this four-letter word because this is how you persevere… and win!
And these are the five reasons why failure and perseverance are so essential to your success:
Every Time You Fail – You’ll Discover Your True Friends
Everytime you succeed, you will find people all around to congratulate your success. This is because people like to associate themselves with a winner. But these people are almost never your true friends. If you want to know who are your true friends… fail over and over again and see who still has your back. Those are the few people who you want to keep in your circle because they’re in it for the long haul.
A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.”
-Christopher Morley
You Must Define Success Before You Can Achieve it
When you’re told about the importance of making lifelong goals… most of us think big. We want a higher paying job, a supercar, and a gold picket fence to contain it all. But you want to know what a true goal looks like? It is a map that leads directly to what makes you feel good. When people make ‘big’ goals that don’t even consider what their mind and body truly desires, they feel good making them at the time, but they lack the motivation to really go after them. If you find that you are failing more than a 72 to 1 ratio, it could be that your definition of success needs a truth overhaul.
A Failure Only Sticks – If You Quit
You never want to go down a failure, and the only way you ever will is if you quit. Failure is only the final verdict if you let it be. What failure should look like is an invitation to reassess the situation and make a new plan. And if you feel embarrassed because you think that everyone around you is keeping track of your failures, remember that nobody keeps track of them more than you do.
A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”
-Elbert Hubbard
Fail as an Opportunity to Learn
There are three types of kids who learned how to ride a bike. There is the kid who fell off their bike, cried all the way home, and then had to ride with training wheels the rest of their life. And yes, those training wheels are hard to get off if you learn from that early of an age to quit when things get tough. There is the kid who falls off, gets back on and falls again and again, and again – until his mom finally comes out to take him to the emergency room.
And finally, there is the kid who falls off, thinks about what went wrong, learns from that incident, and does not repeat it. That second kid had the guts and perseverance, but never took the time to learn from their mistakes. And there is an extra benefit to learning from failure, and that is the brain actually sees these lessons as a reward. Yeah, rather than punishing yourself as a failure by quitting and never trying again, or trying until you are too injured to get back up – you look over the situation, think about what went wrong, learn how to avoid that outcome the next time, and to feel pretty good about that. And that is the definition of what it means to make a “comeback”.
Persevering Does Not Mean to Never Change
You’ve likely heard about the “never give up attitude”. Well, there was actually more to that quote that someone left out. It is true that you should never give up, but some people think that means you should continue climbing up on that same horse – until you eventually succeed. But that is a fools plan. If you are currently failing at your career, the first item of business is to assess what is going on and lay out your options. Yes, you could always go at that same goal from a slightly different angle, over and over, until you figure out a way to get it right. But sometimes the better option is to reassess what you want and make a significant change. A change that may even spin you off onto a new path. The point is – to always assess every failure and learn from it, and then use that information to devise a second try, but just be aware that sometime you may need to make a change that is fairly significant in order to see some positive results.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
-Henry Ford
One of the greatest tragedies in the pursuit of success is to make it and not even recognized your achievement.
Just keep in mind that sometimes success can be as simple as – doing what you love.
About Dr. Eric J. Leech
Eric has written for over a decade. Then one day he created Urbasm.com, a site for every guy.
About Dr. Eric J. Leech