Enough already with promoting and glamorizing failure. I get it. Failure can mean you are pushing the envelope and trying new things. Failure can be an opportunity to learn a better way to do something and to grow. Failure can teach humility. Failure can also be from lack of effort. Failure can be a result of giving up and not doing the work. Failure can become a way of thinking and a habit. Failure is not the key. 

There are a number of key factors we should be focusing on.

Striving is one of those keys. Striving to improve, to learn and to find a better way.

Competing to be better tomorrow than you are today and to do things better than they have ever been done before is a key.

Focusing on effort and process are key. 

Understanding that in the striving and the competing sometimes you are going to be unsuccessful in achieving the desired result is key. 

When you are unsuccessful it is important to step back, reflect, access, and ask yourself, or your team, what did I / we learn from this? What can we do to enhance the effort or process to grow from this experience? 
 

Let’s stop glamorizing failure and focus on striving, competing, learning, growing, and doing the work. People who fail all the time without reflecting, assessing, learning, growing are usually referred to as failures, not successes. 

Failure is easy. Striving, competing, working, getting back up, reflecting, learning, growing are hard. 

A lot of very successful people talk about the importance of failure as a key to success. It sounds cool. It sells. My concern is that we selling the wrong message. When I read their impressive stories it strikes me that it is the work ethic, the growth mindset, the commitment to excellence, the striving for mastery and the way they responded to the failures that are key to their success, not the failure itself. 

What’s Important Now? – Strive to improve, compete to always be better, do the work, and when you fail assess, learn, regroup and get back to work striving, competing, learning and growing.

Take care.

Brian Willis

www.lifesmostpowerfulquestion.com

www.winningmindtraining.com

Maximizing human potential through Life's Most Powerful Question - What's Important Now?

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