You may have heard it said that failure is a part of success. That sounds all well and good doesn’t it? To know that failure is a part of the success journey and that – someday – you’ll be able to look back and see in hindsight at how much you overcame.
Yet we tend to feel a bit less idealistic when we’re sitting in the middle of those failures, don’t we? It certainly doesn’t FEEL like success at all when we are so clearly failing.
Failure is a part of success – a huge part. No successful person will ever tell you that they never made mistakes along the way. In fact, most – if not all – successful people have likely made more mistakes than anyone else in their field.
Why? Why do the most successful among us make the most mistakes?
There are a number of ways to answer this, but one main reason is that they are the ones that are continually trying. They are always doing something. And they are learning valuable lessons from those mistakes which carry them into a wiser path for their next steps.
Here is the key: They take those next steps in spite of their failures.
In other words, they simply don’t give up.
A well-known example of someone who was an equal success and failure is Babe Ruth. He, of course, is known for being one of the best baseball players of all time.
But guess what? He was also baseball’s strikeout king. Imagine that. He failed more often than he succeeded!
Why? He simply didn’t quit.
In other words, he made enough mistakes to learn how to be successful!
This is a message that we see frequently. Too often, we overlook it, or we may subconsciously think it somehow doesn’t apply to us! For instance, I’m willing to bet that you’ve seen quotes like these before:
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- “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
- Success Is Never Ending, Failure Is Never Final – Book title by Robert Schuller
- “Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.” – Chinese proverb
- “Mistakes mean you’re trying.” – Anonymous
- “Mistakes are always forgivable if you’re willing to admit them.” – Bruce Lee
- “Don’t bury your failures, let them inspire you.” – Anonymous
- “Success is the ability to go from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
Do any of them look familiar?
You see, when you’re working on doubling and tripling your sales, you are going to make a mistake. You’re going to make a lot of mistakes.
And that’s ok! Remember: your failures are teaching you how to be successful!
On my latest podcast with Brandon Webb, he talks about his success journey. His incredible story includes everything he learned when one of his businesses failed.
But he kept going, and the work he is doing today is amazing. Check out his story here.
And remember, whatever you do:
Just. Don’t Quit.