Three Ways To Look At Failure

If you look around you will find there are three kinds of people, or
better put, three ways to look at “failure”. If you know me, then you
know I don’t like the word failure in the first place. I think people
need to be in the mindset that failure is just another word for try
again. What I recently learned is “try again” does nothing if you
don’t change your strategy. More on that in a moment.

The first way to look at failure is to say “I failed because I’m not
good enough” or “I failed because it was too difficult”. Then start
making excuses, blame anyone but yourself, complain and give up. These
people say it did not work, so lets forget about it. Then they go on
to something else. This makes me wonder why they try anything in the
first place. Reminds me of the guy I mentioned in a previous post
who never wants to try anything new. You can’t fail if you don’t try to do anything.

The second way to look at failure is to say you need to try harder. In
this group, you don’t think you fail because you are not good enough,
it is because you did not try hard enough. They try harder next time,
still don’t get results, so the try even harder the next time. They
try again and still don’t get the results they want, so what do they
do? You guessed it. Now eventually, if they target small goals, they
will hit them. However if they set high goals, it is rare that they
will reach those goals. They will improve by taking so much action but
they won’t hit the goals they really want. They never live the kind of
life they want. The reason is they keep on taking action but they
don’t change their strategy. In other words, if you keep on doing the
things you are doing today, you will reap the same results. After a
while, these people get really frustrated. I have seen many sales
people and network marketers fall into this category, and you will see
people in every business in this category. They work harder, see more
people, but more or less they stay in their comfort zone of doing the
same things the same old way. After a while they say “I’ve tried so
hard, I’ve tried everything” and they get cynical. They look at people
who have experienced success and think they are just lucky people.

So what is the answer? The third group of people respond to failure
very differently. In fact, they don’t even see failure as failure.
They say, “I did not fail. I just got feedback that I used the wrong
strategy.” By looking at not reaching their goals as just a sign to
change direction, to try something new, to change their strategy they
do not feel bad. They do not get demoralized, rejected, or depressed.
They still feel empowered, they still feel motivated. Without
realizing it, they use what is called reflective intelligence. They
are able to notice what went wrong with the strategy and they have the
ability to change their behavior and do whatever it takes to take
action again and again until they get the result they want.

So I hope you can take these examples of three ways to look at
“failure”, and make an effort to change your thinking. Decide that if
at first you don’t succeed, change your strategy and try again. Don’t
be defeated, don’t think you are not lucky, and by all means, don’t
just simply try again using the same methods that did not work in the
first place.