For years when people asked me if I have any fears I would respond, “Failure”. I have come to understand that failure is really the first part of the success cycle. I used to avoid situations that I couldn’t control because I might fail. I used to avoid uncomfortable situations because I might fail. I used to avoid meeting new people because I might fail…. Life as you guess was about avoidance of failure NOT about growing toward success. Life is different now.
I recognize now that failure is just the first step in the success cycle. If one doesn’t fail he doesn’t have the opportunity to grow or succeed.
When asked, “How do you develop that perspective in life?” my response might sound negative at first. I answer, “Always be prepared for a surprise. The surprise might be a negative surprise. Something is going to happen in your day, whether you are late because you got stuck behind a train or your car had a flat tire—something is going to happen. And the key is your ability not to take mole hills and look at them as mountains.”
Problems are a normal part of change. Things are changing so rapidly that there are going to be problems you face. So you must look at failure as an event, not as a person. I’m not a failure. Maybe I’ve had a failure or a temporary inconvenience. I’ve had a stumbling block, and the idea is to turn the stumbling block into a steppingstone, and step on it instead of stumble over it. So look at failure as the fertilizer of success.
Fertilizer stinks, it smells. You see that guy putting it on his lawn and you say, “Wow, that guy fertilized his lawn.” You fertilize your mistakes. You don’t wallow in them, lay in them, roll in them; you pick yourself up off your mistakes and learn from them. You try not to repeat that same thing again. But you look at it as a temporary inconvenience, as a detour—not as a failure.
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