Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the founder of IBM said: “Success lies on the far side of failure.” It is impossible to realize our full potential unless we have failed so many times that eventually we learn the valuable lessons that lead u to our great successes. Unfortunately, most people mistake the failure as an indicator that they’re not supposed to have their dream realized and they give up. What the failure really says is, learn this and you’ll be closer to you goal. In other words…fail forward.
Thomas Edison said to a reporter after having failed nearly 5,000 times in his quest to invent the incandescent light bulb: “Young man, I’ve not failed at all, I’ve simply identified 5,000 ways in which it will not work.” Yes, we need to make different mistakes, not continue to make the same mistakes while expecting different results. Get ruthless about doing it a different way.
The fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success in adult life. All successful men and women have learned to confront their fear and failure and act in spite of their fears. This is called courage. It takes great courage to become a great success. It takes courage to fail over and over again and not give up, but to learn form each failure. Yes, failure is a great teacher if you learn the lessons.
Remember, all it takes to double your success rate…is to double your failure rate.
Mack Newton
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