You Failed, So What: You Just Got One Step Closer to Success

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." – Winston Churchill

I talk to and meet so many people who say they’ve tried and tried to lose weight or save money or start a part-time business and have stopped short of achieving their goals. The reasons are often different, but deep down they all have one thing in common: they think they are failures.

While it may be true that they have failed, they have done so only temporarily.
Unfortunately, they are using the word “failure” incorrectly. Let me explain.

Failure is a Verb, Not a Noun
So how do we stop ourselves from failing? Easy, first you have to start looking at your failures as verbs, not nouns. All to often we beat ourselves up because we made a mistake or we failed in our attempt to do something. We label ourselves a failure and that label and that attitude doesn’t empower us to find a solution. Rather, it puts us in a state that makes it literally impossible to succeed.

You are not a failure just because your desired outcome is not realized. Chances are that you have barely scratched the surface of what you’re capable of achieving because you let your limiting beliefs stop you from taking consistent and focused action against your goals.

Most of us live with the fear of failure. We’re afraid of attempting something and failing in front of our peers or our loved ones. We’re afraid of being embarrassed so instead of creating a situation in which we could fail again, we give up and stop trying, creating a comfort zone for ourselves. A comfort zone that limits what we can become and limits what we can do in life. It’s time to break out of your comfort zone and try again. Here’s six things you need to do:

1. Stop Making Excuses
Everyone has an excuse for why they’re not successful: I don’t have a college degree, I’m too old to start over, I’m too young to do that, or I’m [insert your excuse here]. The truth is that I can name a dozen people off the top of my head who have had your so-called limitation/reason/excuse and show you how they were successful despite it. The truth is you can do anything you set your mind to, you just don’t know it yet. Take my word for it, if you truly desire to achieve something, you’re not going to let anything get in your way.

So the first thing to do about an obstacle is simply to stand up to it and not complain about it or whine under it but forthrightly attack it. Don't go crawling through life on your hands and knees half-defeated. Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have.
− Norman Vincent Peale

2. Stop Holding Yourself Back
How do you react to a failed attempt? If you beat yourself up or stop trying to do something, you’ve truly failed. All of us can have excuses why we don’t succeed, but the winners in life just don’t make them. They look at every failed attempt as an opportunity to learn something more. You need to realize and memorize the following:

Nothing holds you back but you

Turn your failed attempts into lessons you can learn from, then strike out down a different path or route but don’t ever, ever call yourself a failure because you’ve had a temporary setback.

Once you learn from your failures and mistakes, they should be discarded like spoiled food. To judge yourself only in light of your failures and mistakes is to assume more of the same.
− Jim Cairo

3. Surround Yourself with Winners
Sometimes we find that the people we care most about don’t necessarily support us in our quest to lose weight, start a new business or become financially free. It’s been said that who you spend time with is who you become. Sometimes you have to find some new friends or people to help support you. Sometimes you have to

If you surround yourself with people who are trying to achieve the same goal, you have a built in support group. They are going through the same struggles, the same ups and downs that you're going through and together you can find a way to achieve your goals. Find a new set of friends or a support group and see for yourself. The old cliché is true:

The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

I’m not saying you have to ditch your old friends and loved ones, but you do have to find some people that have the same goals, dreams and mindset.

4. Find a Mentor
One of the best ways to break through your current self-imposed boundaries is to find someone who has achieved what you are trying to achieve. Success leaves clues and someone who has done it is working from a game plan that you can borrow and use as well. All successful people work from a game plan. They may not realize that they’re working from a game plan, but they’re doing something specific each time to get a result. Maybe they’re waking up each day and telling themselves they’re a million-dollar sales person or they are systematically investing their free cash flow in assets in order to become financially free. Whatever it is, you can borrow their game plan and model their behaviors. Soon you will break past your present plateaus and reach new heights.

5. Don’t Be Discouraged, Be Persistent
It may take you longer than you would like to reach your goals, but the most important thing is to stay the course. In other words, you must be persistent and keep on trying to achieve your goals. Need I say more?

You have to learn how to be persistent and not accept temporary setbacks as insurmountable. Take Thomas Edison. He tried and failed (temporarily) to invent the light bulb. After his 9,999 unsuccessful attempt at inventing the light bulb a reporter asked him if Edison would fail 10,000 times. Edison replied, “I have not failed at each attempt; rather I’ve succeeded at discovering another way not to invent an electric lamp.”

Talk about a powerful mindset to have. Each failure was only temporary and he was learning something from each one of those failed attempts. You need to be persistent by constantly trying new things.

6. Learn from Your Mistakes
The key word in that last sentence is “new.” You must learn from your mistakes and figure out what went wrong, change something and try again. If you don’t succeed, try and try again. Colonel Sanders was rejected over 1,000 times before someone bought his famous chicken recipe. The Wright brothers failed dozens of time before taking flight. What makes you think you can succeed in your first attempt?

In Summary
You can do more than you think possible and if you’ve tried and failed once or twice or even twenty times before, don’t be discouraged. To paraphrase Edison, “every wrong attempt takes you one step closer to your ultimate goal.” Don’t stop one yard short of the goal line. You’ll regret it the rest of your life.

All the best.

fabman

© 2003, The Wealthy Pauper, LLC
http://www.fabmansecrets.com