Handling Failure

Failure is a part of life. It is something that we all must deal with. The way that one deals with it directly determines what happens next. You see, failure is not a bad thing. It's just perceived as a bad thing. However, we have complete control over the way that we perceive things. Choosing to have a positive attitude can make all the difference in the world.

Yes, that's right. I said "choosing" to have a positive attitude. That means that we have accountability to ourselves for our actions. We can't just sit back and blame everyone else and external circumstances for our position in life. We actually can choose to have a good day or a bad day. Understand this point- your disposition will determine your position.

So, back to failure: knowing that everyone must experience failure, how should we handle it? It boils down to the way that you think about failure. It truly is a positive thing. It's the only way we learn. It provides stepping stones to success. It steers us in the right direction, closer to our goals. It provides opportunities for us to use instantaneous self-analysis.

Thomas Alva Edison is best remembered for inventing the light bulb, among many other things. Most people know that he failed over 10,000 times when trying to invent the light bulb. 10,000! He produced thousands of failures. When would you have given up? After 10? 100? 1000? When you can envision the end result in your mind, you will not let anything stop you from achieving it. Each failure brought him one step closer to success. Most people think that failures bring them farther and farther away from achieving success. It's backwards. Sometimes you have to be stubborn and just keep plowing forward to achieve your goal.

The next time you run into a brick wall, when you blow it, or when you just make a complete mess of things, pause for just a minute. Don't throw your hands up and get frustrated. Doing so will only waste precious minutes of your life-the only commodity you can't get back. Don't swear and pound your fists and work yourself up. Instead, learn from the failure. In fact, don't even call it a failure. Call it a redirection, because that's what it truly is. Machines need to be calibrated and fine-tuned. Learn from your mistakes so that your next attempt is even closer to success. Don't sit around and mope. Instead, do something, anything.

Nobody is successful 100% of the time. Babe Ruth held the home run record and the strikeout record at the same time. People referred to him as the home run king. They didn't even remember all of his strikeouts. Think about stepping up to the plate for a minute. A good baseball hitter will get on base 30 to 40 percent of the time. That means that they fail 2 out of 3 times they go to bat. It's a given, it's a constant. Failure is a part of life, it doesn't mean the end of things. See failure as a step in the process. Prepare for it. Learn from it. Don't let it control you.