Courtesy of Bob Proctor's 'Insight of the Day' service and Michael
Josephson
THE best way to teach our children to succeed is to teach them to fail.
After all, if getting everything you want on the first try is success, and
everything else is failure, we all fail much more often than we succeed.
People who learn how to grow from unsuccessful efforts succeed more often
and at higher levels because they become wiser and tougher.
Two great American inventors, Thomas Edison and Charles Kettering mastered
the art of building success on a foundation of what others might call failure.
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| Edison, 'failed his way to success'. |
Edison liked to say he “failed his way to success,” noting that every time
he tried something that didn’t work he moved closer to what did.
“Now I know one more thing that doesn’t work,” he would say.
The lesser known Kettering (head of research for General Motors from
1920-1947) talked about “failing forward,” calling every wrong attempt a
“practice shot.”
The strength of both men was that their creativity and confidence was
undiminished by setbacks and unsuccessful efforts.
They accepted that trial and error is an essential strategy
for breakthrough innovation and simply rejected the notion of
failure.
Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, cautioned his leaders from being so
careful that they never failed. He went so far as to say, ”The way to
succeed is to double your failure rate.”
Of course, failure is never desirable, but it is inevitable and, with a
proper attitude, can be quite useful.
The only way to avoid failure is to avoid the risks and challenges and that
probably is a case of real failure.
The great hockey player Wayne Gretzky used to say, “You miss 100
per cent of the shots you don’t take.”
Whatever your goal, whether it’s to get something, do something, or improve
yourself as a person or professional, the secret of success is learning to
transform unsuccessful experiences from stumbling blocks to stepping stones.
Three qualities can turn adversity into advantage: a positive perspective,
reflection, and perseverance.
First, learn from the inventors. Don’t allow yourself to think of any
failure as final, and never allow unsuccessful efforts to discourage you or
cause you to give up.
Remember, failure is an event, not a person. Even failing repeatedly can’t
defeat you unless you start thinking of yourself as a failure.
The way you think about your experiences shapes the experience in ways that
either stimulate or stymie further efforts.
Second, don’t waste the experience. Unsuccessful efforts are wasted and
debilitating only if you don’t learn from them.
Reflect on your actions, attitudes and the results to discover the lesson
within the experience and use that knowledge to guide future efforts.
Third, persevere. Try and try again. Just be smarter each time.
Finally, learn to enjoy the process. Simply being absorbed in the
pursuit of any change that will improve your life or the lives of others is a
blessing.
Remember, character counts.
Michael
Josephson - www.whatwillmatter.com
