Today I want to talk about how to manage failure and success in a way to extract the best from each situation. In my experience, to evolve, it is important to learn from both success and failure. In the same way that success is the direct result of something having been done in the correct way, failure truly exposes the mistakes and errors that prevented success. However, it is really important to know that if we can learn to accept and to deal with failure we can evolve very quickly, and we may even be able to fully realize the opportunities that arise in these moments.
In my case, there has been no significant project that I have started which did not cause me fear! Some of them in fact, really frightened me… but I succeeded in this very way, filled with fear! I may laugh now as I write this article but on the moments that I needed to act, this fear could be so strong that would freeze me… sometimes it would even prevent me from taking any action… it is a tremendous force that we need to unleash to be able to achieve anything.
The turning point is not failure… but rather, it is in the ability to manage fear of failure, fear of the expectations (yours and from others), fear of the idea we may have of success and even of the idea/image that we want others to have of us…
Failure can open up amazing opportunity windows and it can help us to surpass our own difficulties and limitations… But if this is so, what could possibly prevent us from being open to failure?
I would guess that in 90% of the cases it is fear!
I believe that we need to debate fear itself, and we will do this soon, maybe on a post about emotions and how they can impact our actions and decisions…
Anyway, what I want to finish up here sharing with you is: what matters most to be a successful entrepreneur is to define success. What is success for you? Clearly this will be unique for each person. For some it may mean something financial while for others it may be the number of people helped by the project. For yet another it may be having a good home and a car, while another may define success as being able to have a philanthropic project and a foundation.
For each one of us there may be a unique definition of success!
Another aspect is to deal with the fear. Why fear of failure?
Failure is natural, it happens to everyone, if it is not happening right now, it will soon… An important step to learning to manage this fear is to realize that for every failure there will be a new opportunity arising. More… a failure may develop within a new capability to allow you to fly even higher!
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill
Do it! Accept the risks of success, for just as it can go glaringly wrong, it may also be an astounding success…