Welcome back!
As you strive to achieve your goals, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll be met with perceived failures along the way. For example, the person who’s looking for a publisher might get several rejections. Or the aspiring online marketer may have a disappointing product launch. And whatever your goal is, it’s likely that you too will stumble along the path to your goal.
It’s easy to feel like these sorts of stumbles are failures. And once you start feeling like you’ve failed, it’s easy to lose your motivation. You might start telling yourself that you’re not good enough or smart enough to meet your goal. You may tell yourself that your goal is impossible, and that you’d save yourself a lot of time, money and frustration if you just quit now.
But don’t do it.
You see, these stumbles are actually quite natural. It would be odd if you didn’t have them. That’s because they’re all part of the learning curve. You’re bound to make a few mistakes when you’re doing something you’ve never done.
Let me ask you something: Do you know how to ride a bike? If so, do you have a 100% accident-free record? In other words, were you the rare child who never fell off your bike, never ran into something, never went a little too fast?
Of course not. I’m sure you took a tumble or two in your day. And each time you did, you learned something about how to ride a bike better. You learned how to balance better. You learned how to slow down before you ran into something. Maybe you learned that showing off and doing tricks aren’t good ideas.
Point is, you viewed these stumbles as accidents, not failures. It’s not like you fell off your bike and decided you would never ride again, that you had used up your one shot to learn how to successfully ride a bike. No, you just dusted yourself off, learned from your mistakes and kept on riding.
The same thing goes for your dreams. There really are no failures, unless you decide to quit for good. And anything you perceive as a failure is really just a lesson. You can view it as a lesson in “what not to do.” If you learn from the lesson, then you’ll reach your goal more quickly.
For example, the aspiring marketer with the poor product launch may learn the value of market research. The aspiring writer who can’t capture the attention of an agent will learn how to write a better query letter. And whatever stumbles you have will teach you what not to do… and next time you’ll do better.
Successful people have a saying: “Fail fast.” That means that the faster you “fail,” the more quickly you’ll learn the lessons you need to success. In other words, don’t be scared of failures. Instead, view them as lessons… and embrace them.
That’s it for this time. Next time we’ll talk about how a simple change in attitude can propel you to success!