There is a great saying that goes “if you’ve never failed, you’ve never tried anything new” and I’ve been reflecting a lot on this over the past week. Before I launched my own business I was very proud of the fact that I had never failed at anything. I saw only being successful as a good trait. After all why would you want to fail. I had been brought up only to be successful and in fact failure was seen as a negative thing. It meant you were stupid. So I only ever put myself in situations where I could succeed. I’d study hard for my exams to be successful. I’d work hard to be in all the school sports teams and now I realized I would avoid activities where I had any fear that I might not succeed.
Fast forward seven years of running my own business and I realize that a flawed belief that earlier thinking was. Since running my own business I have had more failures than I care to imagine. Its been really humbling at times, as well as frustrating as very failure has initially seemed like a barrier to my success. And yet what I have learnt from these failures has been the magic dust that has helped me become more successful.
In fact the only failure is not to learn from the failure. This is because there is a lesson in everything that doesn’t work out as you expected. Recently I was speaking to my friend who rather sheepishly admitted to me that she had quit her part time role. She was embarrassed and ashamed by this as she simply could not complete the work required in the two days a week she worked. To try and push on would have been in conflict with her values of integrity and delivering excellent service. So she gave in her notice. When I chatted with her about this I asked her what was the lesson she learnt from this experience and she shared with me that intuitively she had had reservations about taking the role. So the lesson she learnt was to listen more to her intuition. What a great lesson to learn.
Increasingly I have come to realize that life is just one big lesson and that each and every day we are presented with opportunities to learn more about ourselves. Sometimes we might not like the lessons but each of us is given the lessons we most need to learn. And you know what. If we don’t learn the lesson, the universe delivers the lesson more profoundly and acutely, until such time we get it.
That was the case for me with boundaries. I kept avoiding dealing with this issue, which had been presenting itself I now see for decades, but more recently I was literally slapped around the face with this lesson. The universe had quietly been delivering her lesson but since I had been avoiding it the universe crescendoed up the volume until I couldn’t fail to take action.
There are many examples of successful people that have not been discouraged by their failures and these include:
· Albert Einstein – he wasn’t able to speak until he was almost 4-years old and his teachers said he would “never amount to much”
· Michael Jordan – after being cut from his high school basketball team , he went home, locked himself in a room, and cried.
· Walt Disney – fired from a newspaper for ”lacking imagination” and having “No original ideas”
· Steve Jobs – at 30-years old he was left devastated and depressed after being unceremoniously removed from the company he started
· Oprah Winfrey – was demoted from her job as anchor because she “wasn’t for for television”
· The Beetles – rejected be Decca Recording Studios who said “ we don’t like their sound – they have no future in show business”
In each case they took the lessons they learnt from their so-called “failed experience” and used this to fuel their success.
So where in your life and business are you being shared lessons that you are failing to take heed of? What do you need to acknowledge and learn, to move forward with more flow.
A simple exercise to do is to make a list of all the failures (or opportunities that did not work out as expected). Write these down the left hand side of a page and then on the right hand side list what the gift was for each of these experiences and now knowing this what can you do differently to move forward.
If you need any assistance with mastering your growth mindset then please book in for a complimentary chat and let’s explore what is possible
Wishing you an amazing aligned and flow filled Wednesday
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
