The Brilliance of Embracing Failure

Say what????You may be thinking, “Deb, you’ve really lost it this time!”?But stick with me here.?There is a proven method to this madness, as any successful entrepreneur, business owner, inventor, artist, author, athlete, and many, many others, will tell you.?No one achieves sustainable success without experiencing LOTS of disappointment along the way.

The stories of wildly successful people who have failed their way to success are abundant.?Take the well-publicized career of Apple founder, Steve Jobs, who was fired from the very company he started.?Jobs said that this dismissal was a catalyst that propelled him to even greater success, when he realized that his passion for his work exceeded his disappointment in failure.?

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”?~Steve Jobs

What if Jobs had simply given up, or changed career paths at that time??It’s highly likely that I wouldn’t be typing on my iMAC at this very moment or pausing to answer my iPhone while googling on my iPad…Thankfully, Jobs embraced this failure and rebounded with even more focus and determination, eventually making the return to Apple that launched that organization into the success stratosphere we know today.

Here’s the key- if you aren’t making mistakes, or failing, you’re either not trying, or you’re playing it safe, and you definitely aren’t growing, either personally or professionally.?In his best-selling book, Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success, author John C. Maxwell says this, “The essence of man is imperfection.?Know that you’re going to make mistakes.?The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does.”??

“Wake up and realize this:?Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.” ~John C. Maxwell

Yet all too often we make choices to stay in our comfort zones, handcuffed by a fear of failure, fear of repercussions, fear of the impact to our reputations, or even more detrimental to forward progress- fear of the ego blow.?We accept the status quo because it’s safe and familiar- without risk.?Could there be any bigger dream-killer than making the decision to settle for the idea that ‘this is as good as it gets’??Why, then, do so many people get stuck in this trap??More importantly, how does one break out of this debilitating quicksand of limiting beliefs??More on that in my next writing…

Allow me to talk to Leaders specifically for a moment.?As you’ve often heard me say, to me there are few privileges in life greater than that of being a Leader.?It’s an immense, awesome responsibility to have that degree of influence on someone else’s life.?Our people often spend more time with us as Leaders than they do their own families.?And the rewards that can spring from intentionally developing Leaders for the future are some of the most gratifying we’ll ever experience.?Yet how often are we as Leaders willing to relinquish our grip on the control levers, to give the power of decision-making to others, to allow our people to fail- never fatally- so that they can grow from the pain of those experiences and rebound even more confident in their abilities??How many times do we applaud the intelligent risk, the exploration outside of the box, the independent thinking, especially when those steps differ significantly from our own??Do we really teach our teams to embrace failure as a means to success??If not, we are doing our people a huge disservice, not to mention contributing- however unintentionally- to their B.S.- their belief system that keeps them from fully stepping into their potential as future leaders.

I have been fortunate to work for a number of tremendous Leaders in my life who have challenged my thinking, pushed me outside of my comfort zones repeatedly, allowed me to fail, and stood by me the entire time.?I’ve never forgotten those leadership lessons.?And while they were not fun at the time- most even quite painful- I wouldn’t trade those lessons for anything because without them, I wouldn’t have successfully rebounded from multiple disappointments to become the business owner, entrepreneur, coach, and human being I am today.?As a result, I fervently believe that we can choose to embrace the lessons of our failures to fuel our future successes.?The alternative just isn’t an option for a healthy life.?And we do get to choose, you know.

Choice is Your SuperPower!?

Deb Dredden Transformational Coaching

Apple photo by Andrea de Santis on Unsplash

Sign photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash