Why We Think Failure is a Good Thing

We all fail and we’re all afraid to fail.  Today we’ll discuss why failure is not always the end of the road and may even be the beginning of a new path.

No one likes to fail but if that fear is stopping you from trying, it can hold you back in every walk-off life from investing to dating.  Every failure should be mined for lessons.  What could you do differently the next time you try?  Maybe the endeavor you failed it should be scrapped entirely.  There is a difference between quitting and failing.

If you start a babysitting business and your town is mostly comprised of retired people, quitting as soon as you realize that is not so much a failure but a reassessment of your situation.  Maybe you decide to start an in-home companion business and now you’re making money.

When it comes to investing a lot of people are fearful and not well informed.  Because of this you listen to an “expert” when deciding what to buy without doing any research yourself.  Well, experts get it wrong too and if you lose money, you’ll blame them and decide the stock market is stupid and you’ll just keep your money under the mattress.

You can learn from this.  Doing your own research will always be more tailored because you have your own specific circumstances an expert doesn’t have knowledge of.

There is more than one way to do nearly anything.  If you need to budget you can use Mint, you can use a spreadsheet, you can use the envelope method.  Just because you failed at one option doesn’t mean nothing will work.  If you burned dinner would you never make dinner again?  No, you would learn that you should not put dinner in the oven and then take a nap.

Once you succeed, no one will remember your failures.  Every time you fail, learn a lesson and try again. If it makes you fell any better Einstein probably failed more times then you ever will.

Show Notes

Betterment:  No hassle investing site.

Think Like a Freak:  The new book from the authors of Freakonomics

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