Business staffing pioneer Robert Half observed, “Laziness is a secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it’s only kept a secret from the person who fails.” People who success develop an attitude of tenacity. They refuse to quit, and they are determined not to let failure defeat them. If you desire to fulfill your dreams, achieve your goals, and live life to the fullest, that’s the kind of attitude you need to cultivate.
2. Change Your Vocabulary
A noted psychiatrist once remarked that the two saddest words in the human vocabulary are “if only.”
Failure isn’t failure if you do better the next time. In Leaders on Leadership, Warren Bennis interviewed seventy of the nation’s top performers in numerous fields. None of them used the word failure to describe their mistakes. Instead they referred to learning experiences, tuition paid, detours, or opportunities for growth. You may think that’s a small difference, but that small difference can make a big difference. The way you think determines how you act.
3. Pay Little Attention to the Odds
Every person who has ever achieved something significant had to overcome the odds. The problem for most people isn’t the odds. It’s that they sell themselves too short. R. H. Headlee observed, “Most people think too small, aim too low, and quit too soon.”
When it comes to the thing you love to do, the things you were made to do, aim high. The odds matter little. Whether you fall down along the way matters little. You fell when learning to walk, didn’t you? Maxwell Maltz, developer of psycho-cybernetics, says, “You are champion in the art of living if you reach only 65 percent of your goals.” Remember, if at first you don’t succeed, then know that you’re running about average.
4. Let Failure Point You to Success
5. Hold on to Your Sense of Humor
One of the best things you can do for yourself when you fail is to learn to laugh.
6. Learn from Your Mistakes
Successful restauranteur and celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck said, “I learned more from the one restaurant that didn’t work than from all the ones that were successes.”
“Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” (Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad) That’s the mark of a great attitude! You don’t lose—you learn.
7. Don’t Lose Your Perspective
Failure is just like success—it’s a day-to-day proves, not someplace you arrive one day. Failure is not a one-time event. It’s how you deal with life along the way.
8. Don’t Become too Familiar with Failure
9. Make Failure a Gauge for Growth
Successful people understand the role failure plays in achievement. That’s true in any life endeavor. Inventor Thomas Edison said, “I’m not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” And gold-medal-winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton asserted, “Achieving that goal is a good feeling, but to get there you have to also get through the failures. You’ve got to be able to pick yourself up and continue.” The farther you go, the more failures you experience.
Psychologist Joyce Brothers observed, “The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.” As actor Mickey Rooney said, “You always pass failure on the way to success.”
10. Never Give Up
Author, lawyer, economist, and actor Ben Stein says, “The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated. It is finished when it surrenders.”
From "The Difference Maker" by John Maxwell
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