Welcome back!
Successful people have one thing in common: They take responsibility for their mistakes. And if you want to be successful, you’re going to have to learn how to do the same thing.
Let me explain…
Most people happily take credit for all the good things in their lives. For example, the person who loses weight says, “I exercised hard and watched my diet.” The person who has a successful product launch says, “I researched my market and created a really good product.” Even the student who gets an “A” on a test says, “I studied really hard.”
But the thing is, people aren’t so quick to take the responsibility for their mistakes, disappointments and perceived failures. Suddenly you hear excuses that place the blame on someone or something else. For example:
- The person who can’t lose weight says, “I can’t lose weight because my spouse always has chocolate donuts in the house.”
- The marketer with the poor product launch says, “My product launch flopped because my copywriter did a poor job with the sales copy.”
- The student who fails a test says, “I failed because the teacher put a lot of trick questions on the test.”
Saying these sorts of things makes us feel better. We can remove some or all of the responsibility and point to someone else as the reason for our mistakes. Doing so relieves some of the disappointment and guilt.
But the problem is that if you blame someone or something else for your mistakes, you’re saying that you cannot control what happens to you. Thus any success you have is just a fluke…and any mistakes are someone else’s fault. And you don’t control any of it.
Of course that’s not true. All of your success and all of your mistakes rest squarely on your shoulders. And while it may be uncomfortable to take responsibility for your disappointments, you must learn to do it. Because once you do that, you realize you control your own fate – and that your success is solely up to you.
For example:
- The person who blames her spouse (and the chocolate donuts) for her being unable to lose weight must admit, “I didn’t lose weight because I didn’t watch my diet closely enough. I need to work on my willpower.”
- The marketer who blames the copywriter needs to admit, “I didn’t do my market research first to see if this was even a product that people wanted.”
- The student who fails needs to take responsibility and say, “I failed because I didn’t study hard enough.”
Just look at those examples. Once the person takes responsibility, he knows what he needs to do next time in order to succeed.
You need to do the same thing. The next time you’re disappointed or you stumble, listen to the excuse you offer. If you point to someone or something else, you then need to point it back at you, 100%, and take full responsibility. Then you need to figure out what you can do next time differently in order to enjoy success.
That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll learn about what types of excuses you should ignore!