Did you fail recently? It is because you are a loser. Winners win, and losers lose. Failure is something to be recognized and fought against.
Point number one on your development goals list should read, “Avoid and fight failure at every juncture.”
Re-Defining The Meaning Of Failure
Failure is not something you should strive for. Lots of people say that failure offers a great learning experience.
Take a long hard look at the “common sense” phrase, “We all learn from our failures.” Just because it is true doesn’t mean you should apply it to your philosophy.
People say, “We learn from our mistakes, we fall, and we pick ourselves up again.” But we don’t learn very much from our mistakes at all. In fact, we learn much more from our successes.
A toddler doesn’t learn to walk by examining the times it fell over; it learns to walk by copying and improving its successful toddlers.
Where is the logic in celebrating or learning from mistakes as a method of developing yourself? A mistake tells you “what not to do,” and that list can go on forever.
For example, Jimmy wants to find a girlfriend. He tries various methods and fails. What Jimmy needs is a little success, so he can learn what “to do” rather than what “not to do.”
He would benefit more from a mentor teaching him what to do rather than 600 mentors teaching him 600 things he shouldn’t do.
Far more can be learned from success. The only problem that people face is that they don’t take the time to learn from success.
Many people spend so long celebrating the success that they never analyze it to the point where they may learn from it and repeat it.
Only Losers Fail – You Don’t Pass Your Driving Test By Crashing
Napoleon Hill says that failure only occurs when you quit. He said that what “some” consider to be a failure is only failure if it is followed by quitting.
To successful leaders, what appears to be a failure is actually a simple signal that the current plan needs amending.
Failure Happens Every Day And All The Time
What you need to understand is that if you are not working towards success on a perpetual basis, then you are failing. This notion permeates every part of your life.
If you are not working out today or sticking to your diet, then you are putting weight on. When you fail to use a muscle, it withers away and becomes weak.
Every endeavor in life is an uphill struggle on an icy slope. You are walking up an icy slope every day, and every time you stop, you start sliding back down. The longer you stop, the faster you slide.
Do You Think Jenny Learned To Hate Her Job In A Day?
Let’s say that Jenny has a big argument with two of your other staff members in your reviews team, and Jenny quits. Do you think this is an isolated incident? Do you even realize that you are fully to blame for this?
Jenny didn’t start falling out with her coworkers in just a day, and she didn’t start hating her job this morning. She didn’t lose respect for her job, coworkers, or you in just a day.
Every time you ignored Jenny’s desires for attention, every time you ignored her need for support, you added yet another straw on the camel’s back.
As a leader, it may seem like you failed your team the day Jenny left in a blaze of anger. But the truth is you had been failing as a leader for months, and you simply didn’t realize it.
You were sliding down the icy slope without taking steps to stop.
Develop Your Leadership Goals By Understanding Daily Failure
As a leader, you need to add failure to your daily leadership development goals because the fact is that you are failing every day. You need to fully understand how you are on an icy slope and become failure conscious.
You need to know what is going wrong, and you need to amend your plan whenever failure hits.
Great leaders seem to attract success, but that is only how it appears from the outside. If you are on the inside, it looks like your leader spends all day putting out fires.
From the inside, a great leader is hit with failure several times a day, and the only way they succeed so well is because they recognize those failures and act on them.
A great leader understands their failure to ensure they don’t slide down the slippery slope.
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