Theodore Roosevelt Letâs talk about failure! This subject is so important and yet so misunderstood! Paulo Coelho hits the spot when he says âThere is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.â The fear of failure is the number one dream killer, but why? Why are we so afraid of failure? Why canât we see it like Napoleon Hill who indicated that âEvery adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.â Or in other words, how would our life change if we could see failure exactly like Napoleon Hill did? Why not see it as a learning experience that is necessary for growth and which provides us with information and motivation? What would happen if you could fully embrace the idea that in reality failure is a sign that points towards progress? Learn the âEdison Mentalityâ. Edison himself said things like âI failed myself to successâ or âI have not failed. Iâve just found 10,000 ways that wonât work.â This is what enabled him to bring many of his inventions to us. The man just didnât give up! Accept your mistakes as feedback and learn from them! Luckily, as kids we didnât have the mentality which many of us have adapted as adults â because if we did then many of us wouldnât know how to walk! How did you learn walking? By falling many times and always getting up again. Unfortunately, somewhere along the road you picked up the idea that failure is something terrible. And as a result of this nowadays we fail once and then stop doing things simply because it didnât work out the first time, because we got rejected, because our business venture didnât work out right away. NOW is the time to change your mentality towards failure! Why donât you look at it in this way from now on: Every failure is a great moment in our life, because it allows us to learn and grow from it! Even more and more companies nowadays are shifting to a new mentality by allowing their employees to make mistakes, because they noticed that if people are afraid to make mistakes, creativity and innovation die and the companyâs progress slows down. At the end of the day it comes down to this: Success is the result of right decisions. Right decisions are the result of experience, and experience is the result of wrong decisions. Here is a story of a famous âfailureâ that literally failed his way to success: ⢠Lost job, 1832 ⢠Defeated for legislature, 1832 ⢠Failed in business, 1833 ⢠Elected to legislature, 1834 ⢠Sweetheart (Ann Rutledge) died, 1835 ⢠Had nervous breakdown, 1836 ⢠Defeated for Speaker, 1838 ⢠Defeated for nomination for Congress, 1843 ⢠Lost re-nomination, 1848 ⢠Rejected for Land Officer, 1849 ⢠Defeated for Senate, 1854 ⢠Defeated for nomination for Vice-President, 1856 ⢠Again defeated for Senate, 1858 ⢠Elected President, 1860 This is the story of Abraham Lincoln, a man we would not exactly characterize as a failure, would we?
