Why Failure is Essential to Your Success

Last week on a member call a new entrepreneur asked me, “What do you do to not look bad when you are getting started?

My response was, “If you are worried about looking bad you are in the wrong line of work.”

Every uber-successful entrepreneur I know has screwed up royally at some time or another. Call it failure, experiments, breakdowns or whatever you want but if you haven’t had at least one massive failure then you are probably playing it too safe.

I’m not saying that making big mistakes is easy – I’m saying that when you make a mistake you are attaining one of the most important mindsets of top performers…

I actually read this quote in a fantastic book called “Go For No” by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz. In one chapter they outline five levels of failure that humans move through (again assuming that we all accept the power of failing as good.)

In the five levels, the higher levels of success equal a higher level of failure! The belief being that the faster you commit to failing the faster you recognize your goals.

Fascinating!

A-ha moment: this is an opportunity to reprogram lifetimes of bad programming you’ve received – to not avoid failure but to seek it out!

Are you still breathing? For some personality types this will feel like walking yourself to the edge of a cliff and jumping – without a safety net! We are not all capable of taking big risks. That’s why some people make better employees.

But entrepreneurs MUST cultivate confidence with seeking out opportunities to fail. Here are the reasons why:

- Failure means you are learning and growing. If you aren’t learning and growing then you are stagnating.

- When we fail at something we identify things we are not good at or don’t like to do

- Persistence is strengthened when faced with obstacles. To sustain high levels of success this is an essential trait.

- Failing keeps our ego in check. Nothing like a good failure to bring us back into humility.

- Not achieving something strengthens us. That saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is true.

- Know that sometimes the purpose and power of failure is to realign back to your truth.

Many years ago I desperately wanted a key role with Motorola on a project for the City of Los Angeles. I didn’t get the job and I saw it as a huge failure. My dejection didn’t last long though when I realized that the entire project team was spending more than half of their life commuting back and forth every day. I realized I had been “spared” and I set my sights on starting my own venture.

When Should Failure Be Avoided?
Sometimes it does make sense to avoid a sizable failure. If a failure would cause you to lose something valuable to you (like a marriage), put you in undue emotional stress, or derail you unnecessarily from a sure-thing then it might be worth exploring some risk mitigation strategies to lessen the impact.

Decide what you are willing to risk and design a filtering process to factor out avoidable mistakes.

So here’s the big question for your growth as an entrepreneur. What needs to shift for you to be willing to fail more? Here are some ideas:

1. Shift your story about failure from a negative to a positive. Make a new decision that when you fail you are actually getting closer to your goals.

2. Challenge yourself to take on ONE new venture that feels scary (you don’t need to do 17 at once…)

3. Explore an area in your life that you feel like you are holding yourself back. Decide to do the opposite of what you normally do for 3 weeks to challenge your comfort zone.

4. Evaluate your current business for where you are fighting to keep things the same versus innovating and challenging the status quo.

And last, when you do fail (and you will) remember what you used to do when you fell off your bike. Get back up, shake it off, and don’t do what you did to fall off the bike again!

What’s been your experience with failure? Share your gems in the comments below…