Don’t fear failure, learn from it instead. Failure isn’t fun, but it can be a key ingredient for success. The lessons that come from failure can be powerful teachers that provide life-long lessons.
Sonia Thompson, CEO of Thompson Media Group, points out in her Inc. article, “Why Tons of Failure Is the Key to Success, According to Seth Godin,” that most people avoid failure like the plague. People instead will spend their time trying to achieve perfection. By using this approach, people will miss all kinds of opportunities. Embracing failure is a way to experience many transformational benefits. You would not experience these benefits without the lessons of failure.
Entrepreneurs Who Fail More Often Perform At A Higher Level
According to 18-time best-selling author Seth Godin: “The rule is simple. The person who fails the most will win. If I fail more than you do, I will win. Because in order to keep failing, you’ve got to be good enough to keep playing.” Godin believes that failure imparts a gift of sorts in that it teaches us how to distinguish between a good idea and a bad idea.
Produce Ideas
Thompson notes, research supports the notion that if you want a breakthrough idea, you will need to “produce an enormous volume of ideas.” Most ideas won’t work. That isn’t the issue. The issue is to work your way through the bad ideas to get to the winners. It would be great to have nothing but winners, but life doesn’t work that way. Failure should be seen more as a path forward than the end of the road.
Get Comfortable With Failure
In Thompson’s view, getting comfortable with failure is critically important. She believes that entrepreneurs should take steps that make them ore comfortable with failure. Detach yourself from the results. It is vital to remember that you are not the work. The work is part of an ongoing process. Getting good at something takes time and there will be failures. Entrepreneurs must embrace a “growth mindset”. Don’t think of failure as failure, but instead as part of learning process. This approach will make you calmer and, in turn, may help you make better decisions.
There will be failure in life. There will be problems and there will be obstacles. Many things will happen that you can’t predict, manage or control, such as the COVID-19 outbreak. The trick is to focus on what you can control and more forward without a paralyzing fear of failure. In the end, failure may be one of your best tools.