Fail More

EVERYTHING YOU DO involves risk. The only questions are what and how much. Poor choices lead you into failure, and good choices take you out of failure.

“Success and failure both leave room for improvement. Inside every success, there are remnants of failure, and in every failure, there are pockets of success” writes Bill Wooditch in Fail More. He wrote the book not to encourage irresponsibility or to give license to “intentionally flunk life one mistake at a time,” but rather to continually improving through intentional practice, with the willingness to embrace the process, and the ability to learn from the result.

Nobody likes failure. We are lead to believe that failure means that there is something wrong with us. Failure simply represents a challenge; not something to avoid. “If you try to evade the things that are fundamentally important to your growth, you’ll pay the price of your neglect at a later date.”

Perfect isn’t part of the human condition. Many people wait for “perfect” before they begin, but perfect isn’t just going to show up out of nowhere. We all have to do the gritty and unglamorous work if we’re going to push the envelope. You have to put your toes on the edge of “comfortable” and step into the pain of change and the cloud of uncertainty to make a real difference in your life.

We crave certainty, and that feeds our fears. When it gets uncomfortable, when fear sets in, “you can’t get emotional; you have to stay centered in logic and break things down to small wins every day.” That’s how you overcome obstacles. “When you move from emotion (fear) to logic (obstacle management), you can then visualize an outcome by walking through the imaginary steps it takes to achieve it.”

The lesson of Fail More is to keep going. “Rejection will slap you in the face, not once, not twice, but so many times that you’ll lose count. But your purpose will compel you to keep going, adapt, and grow.”

There is a lot of material out there reminding us to embrace failure and clever memes that point you forward, but Wooditch makes one of the best presentations of the subject I’ve ever read. There are the stories of Jack Ma, Mark Cuban, Steve Harvey, Sara Blakely, J.K. Rowling, David Neeleman, and other well-known and not so well-known individuals, but he includes his own experiences that give it depth and credibility.

Fail More will help you to work past your fears, the obstacles, set realistic goals, and learn from every result. Success is a process, and failure is part of that process. Failure gives you the critical feedback you need to make the necessary adjustments to bring you closer to your goal.

Keep in mind:

1. Don’t be a victim.
2. Life serves adversity as a barrier to entry in the pursuit of happiness..
3. Don’t measure your self-esteem based on an external event..
4. Look within as you work to create value for people by first becoming of value to yourself..
5. Enjoy the fruits of your labor while you are engaged in their pursuit.

Here are several more takeaways:

There is an expected range of failure that is the price of “good.” Learn to be okay with it.

Failing more is trying more.

The greatest point of growth occurs right below your limit.

Be one of those people that works right up to their edge of comfort.

We all start at a place where we need to improve if we are going to succeed on a more significant scale.

When you seek out uncertainty, you are opening your mind to possibility.

Procrastination, lack of prioritization, and the absence of goals all have their origins in fear.

In order to get what you want, you have to do those things that give you the confidence to do just a little bit more the next day.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:54 PM
Permalink | Comments (0) | This post is about Personal Development