The secret key to success is… failure! It’s sounds, strange, it sounds counterintuitive but it is the secret to success.
Ask yourself how many times have you failed in your life? I’m sure the answer is more than you care to remember. Then think of someone you admire, a role-model who you believe is very successful.
Now ask yourself how many times have they failed? I guarantee the answer is many more times than you have. It is a natural law of life, we learn through trial and error. Just look at Edison and the thousands of attempts he made before he created the light bulb.
However, how often do people only give something a few trials? How long did it take you to learn how to walk? The answer is at least several months. Now I’m going to assume you have good parents, in fact even really bad parents still tend to get this right. After your first attempt, did they give up on you? After your 50th attempt, did they give up, what about the 100th?
No, unless you are reading this right now on a floor computer, I can safely assume you moved out of crawling at some stage.
The problem with seeking success, is many people expect it to be instant, and when it is not, they give up. It seems that today more than ever, people expect instant gratification and when they don’t get it they usually go through a process of being annoyed, then angry and then disappointed.
The other issue is people complicate things way to much. All processes require simple step-by-step instructions. Success is a simple process, its just that it is also a frustrating and repetitive process. You have to do it again and again and again. And even when you do something successfully, to make sure you can continue doing it successfully, you need to do it again and again and again.
If you want to learn how to box, you can’t just learn the basic jab and then have it mastered instantly. Even the best, have to keep practicing it. It is a simple thing to be able to do, but it takes many, many repetitions to master. And even then, you can still improve on it.
So you need to fail. You need to crawl before you can walk and you need to throw hundreds of horrible jabs before they start to become reasonable.
However, here is the secret, if you want to create motivation and inspiration in yourself, don’t call your mistakes failures. You are going to eliminate failure from your vocabulary.
What you will call them is ‘sleight errors’, or ‘initial miscalculations’, or ‘adjustments to make’ or simply ‘feedback’. We all need to make adjustments, and we all need to take in feedback. Notice how those kind of words are so much more motivating and inspiring.
You need to make feedback your friend. The more feedback you receive, learn from and use to recalculate, the more you will succeed.
To your Success and Fulfilling Happiness,
Aleks Srbinoski
