FMM074 - Failing to Succeed

When we try new things, we imagine new ideas. And when we imagine new ideas, we try to make them a reality. And whenever we do that, failure is inevitable.

If we’re going to succeed at anything that’s important to us, failure will be an inherent ingredient to that success.

Yet so many people are terrified of making mistakes, of failing to get it right, of trying something new, of trying to write a piece of music.

But if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.

The key to doing something different is to learn. And the key to learning is to make mistakes and to reflect on them.

You can either choose to keep feeling the same pain, the same failures again and again, or you can choose to reflect and to grow and to fail forwards towards success.

In this episode, I set out three of the most effective ways that you can incorporate reflection into your daily routine so that YOU can be prepared to turn any failure from a problem, into an opportunity.

In anything that you do, you will either get the outcome you want, or you will get the lesson you need, providing you reflect.

And when you really think about that, there's no such thing as failure anymore. 

That's how powerful it is.

Key takeaways:

• Failure is essential to progress, but only if you learn from it
• The only time that you can truly fail when you're shooting for a big goal is when you give up.
• Pain + reflection = progress.
• You should be opportunity-focused, not problem-focused.

Quotes

“Failure is essential, utterly essential if you want to progress, but you're only going to progress if you learn from it. So you can either choose to keep feeling the same pain, the same failures again and again, or you can choose to reflect and to grow and to move towards success.” (14:12)

“ ‘If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.’ And the key to doing something different is to learn. And the key to learning is to make mistakes and to reflect on them.” (10:59)