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Failure's Not So Bad if You Learn Something From
It
It’s part of an entrepreneur’s make up to take risks. Launching a new
product, entering a new market, or starting a business entails an
element of risk that can lead to failure just as it can lead to success.
As Benjamin Franklin once said:
“The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the
biggest mistake of all - doing nothing.”
Many of the world’s wealthiest
people have failed in business, some more than once. What sets them
apart from other ‘failures’ is their ability to learn from their
experiences and put failure behind them. We should never be
afraid to fail; only to fail to learn from our failures.
Failure can be a great teacher – it teaches us what not to do. Our lives
are filled with goal-setting and working to achieve those goals, and
when we do something that doesn’t get us where we want to be we can
choose to either give up or to try something else. And at that point we
already know one approach that won’t work.
Once we begin to look for other means of achieving our goals we open up
our minds and have to apply our intellects to alternative courses of
action that might earlier have been ignored. We learn to create a
greater number of options and to be more critical in evaluating them.
With the right kind of
personality – the entrepreneurial kind, failure is a motivator. Nobody
likes to fail and it can make us even more determined to find success.
Failure is never seen as the end result of a drive toward a goal; it’s
only a setback.
This ability to fall and rise again builds character in a person. Just
being able to get up and try again is a means of proving to ourselves
that we’re bigger than whatever it was that caused us to fail. We’ll
know more next time; we’ll be stronger and better-equipped to reach the
goal.
It doesn’t mean that failure blinds us to the truth. We have to be
realistic in our assessment of why we failed if we’re going to find any
benefit in it. Our self-perception is sharpened as is our ability to
analyze our weaknesses and compensate for them.
You’ve no doubt heard the expression “what does not destroy me makes me
stronger” or words to that effect. Those are the words of the German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and they apply to entrepreneurs in the
same way they do to champion athletes. The only way to success is to lay
yourself on the line and try as hard as you can.
And just as in sport, failure builds the strength of the businessperson
and makes them tougher for the next attempt. You gain a clearer vision
of victory and define your goal in detail. You feel less pain when
you’re exerting maximum effort.
Life isn’t easy and failure proves it; it also proves that hard work can
be rewarded. Having an early or easy success can be misleading. Think of
a child that has everything given to it. Does that prepare the child for
adulthood? It does not!
Experiencing failure is good preparation for life in the world of
business and prepares us for dealing with reality and hard facts.
Don’t take failure personally. It’s an experience that tells you
something didn’t work out and that you have to try something else next
time. If failure is taken the right way you will have acquired valuable
knowledge and made progress towards your goal of success. You will be
wiser and stronger as a result.
Among many notable people who failed early in their lives and later went
on to greatness are Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Helen Keller.
They each had the option of giving up or learning from their experience
and applying this knowledge to try again for success.
Sumner M. Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom, one of the world's
largest entertainment and media companies, said this about how his early
failures helped get him to where he is today: "Big success is not built
on success. It’s built on adversity, failure and frustration, sometimes
catastrophe, and the way we deal with it and turn it around."
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