The Possibilities You can Discover in Failure

It seems as we’re constantly fleeing from making mistakes. Every step and movement we make should go as planned. This kind of thinking applies that we have to know it all, see through the future with laser eyes as our guidance. However, the problem with this type of thinking is that we simply don’t know how every planned step will have its way, we purely have to take a risk: the risk of failing.

”If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.” Mary Pickford

Fear has swept itself around the word failure, and it has build up a social myth that once you’ve failed, you will never again arise because of it. I believe that this panicking fear has been imprinted in most peoples’ heads thanks to school. Here you memorize what is said in a book that the school has laid in front of you and if you fail a test, you can fail an entire course, which immediately makes you feel that not only have you made a mistake, but you are the failure. The tests and teachers (authority in most students’ perceptions) measures how much of value you contain as an individual.

Though, looking back at many creative innovators, you’ll soon discover that failure is the number one key to success. In short, failing can be the number one building block to your success strategy. Thomas A. Edison said “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” This lead to his success of inventing the steel alkaline storage battery.

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Thomas Edison

This way of strategy doesn’t suggest that you deliberately shall go out to fail. It basically means that as we fail, we can find lost pieces inside of the failures, possibilities that can wake us up by showing what we’re doing wrong and what can be improved. Therefore it is crucial that we don’t shut our eyes when we make mistakes, but calculatingly slicing up the problems.

For instance, if you’re not completely sure who your niche customer is, but unfortunately already have a product to sell, then you can seek and seek, by for instance printing ads in magazines. Most people will reject your offer; while there’ll be that one person who decides to buy. So by making mistakes with many potential customers, you’ve dug through the clutter and found your matching customer.

“There are no failures - just experiences and your reactions to them.” Tom Krause

It’s easy to feel panic when just failing, so at moments as these, it’s highly important not to be too affected by your emotions. Try to find what went wrong and in which ways you can learn from these problems instead of thinking that the true problem lies in you. Look through your strategy and find the weak points that have lead to the failure. This will of course give you an entirely new opportunity to start fresh and stronger. Your strategy should be taken seriously but should definitely not be personal. Nevertheless, feeling pissed of can actually help your strategy, if you use that high leveled energy in the right manner. Rather than using it to blame the entire world for being wrong, use it to build up your success strategy.