And it will, what do you do?
Wilson NG, at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife, shares 5 things to do When Failure Strikes.
My fave is:
5. Seek a Higher Purpose!
You are more likely to succeed, be less disappointed, and also feel more fulfillment if you can combine financial objectives with also an impact on society.
From Small Biz Trends Twitter post.
This post from 37Signals blog, A Pleasant Failure, reminds us all that your customer's error, real or imagined, is a grand opportunity to surprise and delight them.
Celebrate the failure with a pleasant surprise for them.
"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try." - Beverly Sills
From Sam Glenn: http://www.SamGlenn.com/bl
Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda said, ‘Many people dream of success. Success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. Success represents the 1 per cent of your work that results from the 99 per cent that is called failure.’ Welcome Failure by Paul Sloane at LifeHack.
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas Edison
Every failure...you're just getting one step closer to that success. Celebrate each one. And then get back to it.
First shared by Becky McCray at Small Biz Survival.
She found it at @IGetu2C on Twitter.
We hear a lot about being positive. Maybe we also need to recognize that the negative parts of our lives and experience have just as important a role to play in finding success, in work and in life. - Lifehack's How Fear of Failure Destroys Success
I was talking with a friend of mine about a dream, a project, a business plan I was working on. I was sharing my progress on putting all the pieces together, making a coherent presentation, working the numbers...I think it's a good idea, he was pretty supportive, (which was appreciated) and then I laughed and said Or, it'll be another great idea crushed by reality.
And he admonished me for my 'attitude'. I knew he implied I was being negative.
I had to laugh a bit.
Dreams and ideas do get crushed by reality. That detail that's overlooked. Details like people's willingness, your ability to communicate it, changing trends in the market, timing, financing, funding, people's integrity, the odd moment or series of moments you can't foresee or just a bad idea sold only on the power of a personality or politics.
My biggest mistakes, my biggest learning lessons, have always been where I rushed in blindly, convinced of the brilliance of my first vision along with the easy path to its completion. The thinking is...Well, it's easy to conceive. It MUST be easy to do...Hurry up. Just do it. You'll see...
Now I move a bit more deliberately. Slowly. I stop to look around, outside, listen (and I hate listening or maybe I don't have the patience...), walk away, pause, never force and realize I'm learning at each stage, I'm not burning bridges (prematurely, at least) and at the end of the day, sometimes I'm not in control, sometimes the goal was in the learning and doing, not in the outcome. And the failures in that process are the real victories. Well, that and my decision to get up and start new trial, a new idea, a new conversation make for the victory.
Creative thinking expert Roger von Oech shares how failure can change your thinking in Embrace Failure. When we commit an error, when we fail, we know we need to change direction. When things are going well, we don't even think about direction or change.
We learn by our failures. Our errors are the "whacks" that lead us to “think something different.”
My campaign to redefine failure is based on this. If you want to move forward, you are going to have to fail. And as long as we let failure be defined as a negative, unacceptable concept, we can't benefit from embracing failure and using it to change our thinking.
My friend Phil Gerbyshak sent me the link to Roger's article, and many more related to failure.
It's one of my few favorite entrepreneurial topics, and honestly, it's probably one of the reasons I connected with Zane. We're both serious about celebrating failure.
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About the Author: Becky McCray's passion is small business and rural communities. She writes about small business and rural issues, based on her own success and failures. Her blog, Small Biz Survival, is an ideal example for a blog: providing useful tips and resources, honest and personal, building community. She is the co-owner of a small town retail liquor store and small cattle ranch. As a consultant, she helps tourism related businesses from Oklahoma to Africa to maintain their web presence and helps rural nonprofits and governments with grant writing.
Tim Walker at Business Insight Zone asks What's the Straight Line:
What’s the straight line from here to there?
If you aren’t following it, what’s preventing you?
His blog post lists all the things we see, I've done, to avoid moving forward. The list and reasons are silly, really. I guarantee they're still being done, sometimes by me. I'm getting better at seeing the pattern develop. I can head it off more often now at the pass, so to speak.
Sometimes, it's from mental fatigue. UNC's b'ball coach Ol' Roy Williams had a great qoute about fatigue: Fatigue makes cowards of us all. ( Being a lifelong Duke fan doesn't keep me from tipping my hat to him on that one.)
Sometimes, it's not seeing that first step and where it will land.
Sometimes, it's fear of getting out of my comfort zone.
I do know that mapping the unknown into doable steps replaces the uncertainty of where I'm going with the certainty of the first steps I can take right now.
And then I'll see where I'm at.
Here are the resources I use to get back and walk the line:
* Notepad with me at all times. I carry a notepad with me, even in the house, as I never know when/where I'll have a solution come to mind. I recommend the moleskine for it's simple functional design and its different sizes. It may sound pretentious. It's not. I've tried other notepads. And they don't last or work as well. Use what works for you.
* JOTT. Jott replaces the notepad when I'm in the car. I have it's number speed-dialed into my cell phone and (using hands-free calling) I call JOTT, dictate my to-do's and they're waiting for me at my computer. Then I can start immediately on the list.
* Basecamp. I've used the wiki Basecamp for 2 years now. I get more value out of it every month. It's simple, easy, cheap. Powerful. I use the to-do lists and milestones now to prepare my week on Sunday. It includes email reminders and the dashboard features shows what's due and...what's overdue. And there I can turn to it anytime I lose focus or find myself distracted. I find the to-do list for the day's milestone. And start working it.
* Balance in Life. Walking away from a persistent problem generates the best results. The operative term is persistent. That requires me to persist in finding a solution. When no more paths to a solution can be walked, I walk away. Go to bed early, go for a walk, go for a run, eat..., hang with my family (though sometimes it drives my wife crazy when she sees me looking at her but my attention is verrrry distant...). Inevitably, a solution will come when I relax and walk away from the problem at this point.
Neither individually, nor collectively, do these resources assure I reach my goals. They do raise the likelihood I'll reach them faster. And at the same time, they assure I'll fail faster, too. But regardless, I have a system that keeps me on track, on target and it's one where I gather my lessons learned along the way. And that means more success, fewer and shorter-lived failures.
And I can pay full attention to my wife and family. That's what it's all about.
You can never hit a home run if you don't take your turn at bat. Better to go down swinging, than sit in the clubhouse. - Me.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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