Diary Of My Life 💋👏

FAILURE PART 3

Failure

Old Definition

Anegative,fatal,and final result indicating:
• An inabilityto perform and a lackof success
• Afalling shortbecause ofineptness, deficiency,ornegligence
• Abad,bad thing that should be avoided,mourned,and punished.
NewDefinition
Ashort-term unexpected resultthat reflects a challenge in progress and that provides:
• Astepping-stone to success
• An opportunityforlearning and de- velopment
• An opportunityforcreative change and innovation.

Success
Old Definition

Arevered shrine
ofachievement. An all-positive final resultindicating:
• Superiorabilitythatrequires no furtherlearning orchange
• Performance thatis devoid offlaws, weakness,orfailure
• Agood,good thing that should be sought,celebrated, and honored above all else.
NewDefinition
Awayofliving founded on benefiting from all life has to offerthatis:
• Along-term sequence oflife- improving results
• An outcome ofshort-term setbacks and failures
• Aprocess ofcontinual development, learning,and fulfillmentin life.

Failure is not something to be feared. It contains a positive challenge for success- ful living. Today’s failures contain the seeds of tomorrow’s greatest successes. The first step to mastering the art of fail- ing successfully is to come to see failure and success in a whole newlight.

A n aspiring young man once asked a very promi-
nent CEO how he could become more success- ful. The CEO was Tom Watson of IBM, who reportedly responded that if the young man wanted to become more successful he should do the seem- ingly unthinkable—fail. In fact, Watson advised that he should double his failure rate. At first glance this is an odd prescription indeed. Upon closer inspection, however, it contains a great deal of wisdom.

A failure should not be viewed as the end of the story but instead as a stepping-stone to a larger success. If someone never fails, this is a telltale sign that he is not trying anything new or challenging. Mastering new skills and growing as individuals..

require that we enter unfamiliar arenas that can provide us with new knowledge and capabilities. These new ventures can be as varied as learning to play the piano, speak a foreign language, water-ski, or invest in the stock market.

The principle remains the same—you must expe- rience failure in order to succeed. If you expect to learn without making a mistake, you are in for an unpleasant surprise. Imagine Mozart or Beethoven trying to compose music so cautiously that they never hit a wrong note. Do you think they would have been able to compose masterpieces if they to- tally avoided mistakes?
In fact, Beethoven was no stranger to failure. At one stage in his music career a music teacher said that he had no talent for music. The teacher even re- marked that “as a composer he is hopeless.”
The more you try to grow your knowledge and experience in new and challenging areas, the more mistakes you will have to make. Much of this poten- tial for growth boils down to being willing to take risks.

Author Carole Hyatt wrote that aggressive CEOs will tell their direct reports: “If you haven’t failed at least three times today you haven’t tried anything new.” And she adds that avoiding failure leads to avoiding risks—“a type of behavior not well suited to most businesses in today’s economy.”3 So if you want to succeed more quickly, heed the surpris- ingly sage advice—double your failure rate.