Friday, September 17, 1999

Enough failure

Failing at anything can be a difficult experience. It can be embarrassing, discouraging, and expensive. It can steal your time and energy, leaving you with nothing to show for the effort except disappointment.

Yet as bad as failure is, there is something much worse -- the absence of failure. If there is no failure, it’s because there has been no attempt. The only way to completely avoid failure is to avoid making any kind of effort.

Success comes not from the avoidance of failure. Most of the time, success is achieved only when there has been enough failure. Failure, as difficult and painful as it may be, is an essential building block for accomplishment. To find one strategy that works, you must be willing to go through several strategies that don’t work.

Failure is a magnificent teacher, and one which is unavoidable in any serious attempt. Undertake something ambitious, and you will most certainly have some failures. Only when you’ve had enough of them, will you truly succeed.

Don’t let the fear of failure stop you. Plan for it, deal with it, minimize its negative impact, and march on through it. Success is just one more attempt away from failure.

— Ralph Marston

Go on past your fear       The power of consequence

Copyright ©1999 Ralph S. Marston, Jr. All Rights Reserved. The Daily Motivator is provided for your personal, non-commercial use only. Other than personal sharing, please do not re-distribute without permission.