Motivation
*** Failure Is Not An Option…Or Is it?
By Keith A. Shaw, President, Mind Body Spirit Central.com and SelfGrowth.com Official Guide To Motivation
Jan 9, 2008

“Failure is not an option” was the tag line for the film, Apollo 13. In fact, if you go to the souvenir shop at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, you can purchase shirts, license plates, bumper stickers and so on with this quote emblazoned on them. Okay, I’ll confess. I bought a license plate that now hangs on the wall of my office.

What if we modify this statement and instead ask, “Is failure an option”?

If you think about it carefully you will find that the answer is Yes!

I’m guessing that many of you are surprised by my answer. I’ll also bet that many of you are so terrified of failure so much to the degree that you would never attempt to try anything new – no matter how small or large. Let me ask you this…if you aren’t willing to risk and make mistakes, how will you ever learn and grow?

Failure is part of the process of learning anything. You can gain far more knowledge from failure much more than from your successes and triumphs. You will more often find out what will work, by learning from your mistakes.

When you begin to work on any new venture you are going to run into difficulties. Those who are successful in overcoming failure never lose their nerve, go to pieces or lose control of themselves. And they never give up on finding a solution. They also never define themselves as a failure.

The most successful people fail well and fail gracefully. Look at any great inventor and you will find that they failed far more than they succeeded. When you look at the very best athletes, you will find many that lose more contests than they win. Or salespeople who are the very best at what they do. They know that for every sale they make, they will experience far more rejections.

In the same way that you learn to win, learn to fail. When you realize that failure is a normal part of life and learning, you will be more accepting of your self and your self esteem and outlook will improve.

Amar Gopal Bose, the founder of Bose Corporation said, “No one ever won a chess game by betting on each move. Sometimes you have to move backward to get a step forward.”

Change your approach to thinking of failure as being equal to a negative outcome. We all fail. If you can learn from, rather than breaking under the pressure of failure, you will achieve far more than those that do not.

Copyright 2008 by Keith A. Shaw and Mind Body Spirit Central.com, LLC. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, audio or video recording or otherwise – without the written permission of the author and publisher.