Failure Is Not An Option?
by Leslie Fieger
I’ve heard it said that you must approach a goal as if failure were not an option. It is a great and
powerful thing to have a super positive attitude, but we all know that failure is always there lurking like
some beast in the night, in the closet or under the bed.
So, let’s shed some light on the idea of failure so that it stops being that monster. Failure is no big deal.
And, in fact, it is your friend. Only when you think that failure is the end of the story does it become
the danger you imagine it to be; when you see it in its proper place, it is the thing you may need most to
succeed.
Any person who goes through life without experiencing failure is the ultimate failure in life.
Why? Because if a person has never failed, they have never attempted to achieve or accomplish
extraordinary goals, something outside of their comfort level, something noteworthy. They have not
reached for excellence and have stayed safely within the realm of mediocrity.
Success is not defined by or built upon the absence of failure. Rather, success is felt only when failure
is accepted as part of the process and is overcome.
An athlete becomes an outstanding success when they set new records. Babe Ruth set home run
records. He also set strike out records. Every strike out was a failure at bat. The average major league
player is taught by batting coaches to 'get a hit' or avoid strike outs rather than strive for a home run.
Most highly successful entrepreneurs fail multiple times in the process of hitting their home runs.
A child learning to walk falls down many times before taking those successful first steps, then stumbles
and falls again and again before being able to walk, and then run. The body needs to learn the failure
before it can know the success.
Without the willingness to experience yet another failure, no child would ever walk. Without the
willingness to experience failure, no great deed would ever get done, no new thing would ever be
accomplished, nothing new would ever be learned.
Thomas Edison would only have been a failure if he had not been prepared to fail hundreds of times
before hitting on the right combo of gas and filament in his quest to invent the electric light bulb. His
attitude was so focused on success that he did not even consider these failed attempts as failures. He
called them successful eliminations of ways that did not work.
Another highly successful person, the great hockey player who set all kinds of scoring records, Wayne
Gretzky, who missed (or failed at) more than 90% of his shots, once said, "You miss 100% of the shots
you don't take."
Only when you are prepared to fail, will you ever truly succeed. Those who risk the most failures,
succeed the most. In other words, embrace failure...it demonstrates that you are on your way to success.
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Leslie Fieger, The DELFIN Trilogy and The DELFIN Empowerment Platform