Fail Your Way To Success
Okay … I’m going to let you in on the absolute secret to success, ready? The absolute secret of success is to double your failure rate! What??? I can hear you ask … that doesn’t make any sense! Yet its true that generally those people who try the most also fail the most. They also succeed the most as long as they treat failure as feedback and chance to learn, grow and improve.
There is a famous story about Donald Trump at the time he had lost all of his money. He was walking with a friend of his and as they passed a homeless person Trump commented ‘You know that guy has $146 million more than me!’ His friend replied ‘What do you mean, he doesn’t look as though he has any money?’ Trump then reminded the friend that whilst that was true, he was probably not in $146 million debt with no assets either.
The average person, had they been in Trumps position when he lost everything, would have developed an identity and belief that they were massive failures, and that there was no way they could come back from this position. Trump chose to ask himself a better question to see what he could learn from this. He asked how this failure could be used to empower him … and he got the answer! By not looking at this failure as a failure, and asking what he could learn from the situation, he managed to turn it all around and amass a reported $7 billion fortune.
Use the Fail Forward Fast Formula!
In order to achieve massive success at an accelerated pace, simply use what I call the Fail Forward Fast Formula … or FFFF! for short. FFFF! is a mindset that says that the more I am prepared to risk temporary failure through having a go, the faster I am likely to arrive at a point of success. This is because each failed attempt is a learning experience that allows me to adjust my approach, take new action and experience new outcomes. By applying FFFF! you will dramatically alter your position in relation to your goal.
They key to using failure as a bridge to your success is in how you interpret it in the moment it happens. If you interpret failure as the end of the world and this goals a failure and therefore I am a failure … well you are moving yourself to a dis-empowered position where it is likely to become true. In those moments where you have tried something and it hasn’t worked out, the key is to ask yourself questions that will lead you out of the darkness of failure into the light of empowerment. From there you are in a position to try again.
So what questions could you ask yourself to fail your way to success? What about these …
‘What can I learn from this?’
‘What’s good about this situation?’
‘What’s the message or lesson here?’
‘How can I make this work next time?’
‘How can I do things differently the next time?’
‘What do I need to do to dramatically alter my results?’
In those moments of despair when you have tried and failed, ask yourself these questions and focus on the answers you give yourself. The answers will empower you to try again, and again until you are well on your way down the path to success. Along the way you will learn, grow, develop and change as a person. Your capacity for handling temporary failures, and focusing on success will be enhanced.
Fail Forward Fast and you will be well on your way to success!
This article was written by Rod Moore of Life Design Systems. Rod is the creator of the Goals Magic System, a free personal goal setting system to enable you to design a compelling future. To get your free copy of Goals Magic visit the web site at http://www.GoalsMagic.com