5 Valuable Lessons That Can Inspire You to Fail Your Way to Success
How to Change Your Perspective on What Failure is to Stay Motivated to Achieve What You Want
Even though setbacks and failure can affect your self-confidence and motivation, they can also inspire you to fail your way to success through new awareness and insights.
Failing your way to success means using the lessons you’ve learned from your experiences to achieve what you want.
1-Minute Summary Video
If you pursue things you’ve never done before that cause you to stretch beyond what you’re familiar with, you may experience failure. Everyone’s failed at something.
However, failure isn’t a bad thing because it’s an opportunity to learn and grow so you can improve yourself.
Famous People Who Failed Their Way to Success
Here are examples of people who experienced many setbacks and failures on their way to the success we admire and respect. They did not allow the fear of failure to affect their future success.
- Oprah Winfrey — Founder of the OWN television network experienced a major career setback when she lost her job at a local television station in Chicago because of poor ratings. She stayed in the industry working odd jobs before she got a big break when Steven Spielberg offered her a role in the movie The Color Purple. Oprah has had a successful career in talk show television and continues to make her mark with her work.
- Steve Jobs — Co-founder of Apple was removed from his company, which prompted him to start a new company called NeXT, before returning to Apple and helping it become the company it is today. The lessons Steve learned about innovation, leadership, design, and customer experience served him well in his second stint with Apple.
- Richard Branson — Founder of the Virgin group, which controls over 400 companies today, has had many failed business ventures including Virgin Cola, Virgin Cars, Virgin Publishing, and Virgin Clothing. These failures have not prevented him from creating a world-renowned global business that serves customers in many industries.
- Elon Musk — CEO of Tesla Motors and founder of SpaceX has experienced many failures in his personal and professional life. That has not stopped him from becoming a highly influential figure in space transport and the motor industry.
- Jeff Bezos — Founder of Amazon has had many setbacks taking Amazon from an online bookstore to the conglomerate it is today, offering e-commerce products and services, video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Having acquired the status of the richest person in the world, Bezos continues to be an example of what is possible.
Failure can eventually make you a successful person if you extract powerful lessons from your experiences, learn from them by doing a failure analysis, and avoid making similar mistakes again.
5 Lessons That Will Inspire You to Fail Your Way to Success
Every failure you experience can teach you valuable lessons. It’s your responsibility to learn the lessons, so you can avoid repeating the mistakes you’ve made.
Here are five lessons that can inspire you to fail your way to success, which will help you change your perspective on what failure is to stay motivated to achieve what you want.
- A setback or failure is not fatal or a sign to stop. Rather than slowing down or stopping, use your disappointments to refocus and recommit to what’s important. Sometimes, taking an alternative approach can lead to opportunities for growth and more success.
- Everyone’s path to success is different. If you did something that made someone else successful, but it didn’t work out for you, that doesn’t mean you failed. It could simply mean your road to success will be unique to you. Keep learning and adjusting your actions. There is no need to compare yourself to others.
- Every Experience Will Teach You Something if You Make Reflection a Practice. You can only extract lessons if you review your experiences. That’s how you will learn what worked, so you can do more of it, and what didn’t work, so you can change what you’re doing. Making reflection a practice will lead to insights and breakthrough moments.
- Take responsibility for all your results. There’ll always be things you cannot control that will impact what you want to achieve. However, that’s not an excuse to complain or blame others for your lack of results. When you take responsibility, it means you acknowledge you have the power to change your results, no matter what the conditions or circumstances.
- Before you quit something, do a regret evaluation. Things will not always work out. Before you decide to quit on something, ask yourself whether you will regret it later on in life. If you know you won’t, get clear on the payoffs before you quit. If you believe you may regret your decision, figure out what steps you need to take to get back on track and reach the success you want.
Final Thoughts
When you shift your perspective on what a failure or setback is, it can inspire you to fail your way to success. If you want to achieve big goals, there’s a good chance you will experience setbacks or failure.
Your ability to change your perspective on what failure is will help you recommit to what you want and keep you motivated to continue taking actions that will lead to the success you want.
Action Step: Reflect on your last setback, failure, or disappointment. How did you deal with it? What did you learn from it? Identify lessons you can take away from the experience that will make you wiser and determined to reach the success you want.
Question: What are other valuable lessons that can inspire you to fail your way to success?
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