Failure is something that most people are afraid of. Why? Mostly because other people notice failures and usually associate that failure with that person. People look at someone a little differently when they have watched him or her fail publicly. No one wants to be seen as a failure.
The truth is that there cannot be success without the risk of failure. Whether it be starting a business or talking to a random girl at a bar. You never know what could happen. You could make a million dollars or get slapped in the face.
I have always looked at failing in a different way. If I fail at something it is usually because I didn’t have the desire to succeed. For some reason I have always had the motivation to be the best at whatever I do. Call it super-competitiveness. As long as it is interesting, I will dissect it and learn it from the inside out.
There is however certain failures that cannot be helped. For example, if you ran a food and beverage company that sold pizza and beer at outdoor festivals. You would have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in pizza and booze. If for some reason the festival was canceled or had little turnout(think weather, terrorist attack, traffic, etc) you would most likely lose your ass. I like to chalk failures like that up to bad luck.
Other failures happen because of poor planning, lack of hard work, no attention to detail, no market, etc. These are the failures most people deal with.
Example: Starting a new poker forum in 2008 only to promote it half-heartedly and then realizing it probably wasn’t the best idea. This is the result of poor planning and lack of hard work. The poor planning was thinking that it would be easy to build an active loyal community when there are already dozens of them on the web. Sure it can be done but not without a different plan of attack.
Failures should teach you something. Ask yourself why it didn’t turn out like you thought it would? Take the answers to that question and apply them to your next project. Eventually you will have so much experience that you will never fail.
Failures happen every day whether they are big or small. Failures are a part of life. Most of my failures have come from lack of experience. The more experience I gain the less I fail. If you are afraid to fail then you are afraid to succeed.
Filed under: Rants and Raves | Tagged: failure, success
