Failure Is Not About Falling Down, It's About Staying Down.

Today, Mo Farah stumbled and fell during the 10,000 metre race.

For months, a normal family life had been substituted by a dedicated regime of training and preparation, running up to 135 miles per week just to maintain the level of fitness world-class Olympians require.

This training paid off; from the onset he was confident and relaxed, cheekily waving to his family when rounding the second bend, languishing comfortably towards the back for some laps as though out for a Sunday jog before moving up mid-pack, even teasingly moving to the front then dropping back to provoke the frontrunners. Nothing to worry about.

And around the 10-minute mark, all that investment seem to vanish instantly in a stumble that saw him crash to the ground.

1. Control Failure - Don't Let Failure Control You.

Falling was outside of his control: the event had happened, it's history. He can't change it now... but he could decide his response to it.

And in that moment he had two choices:

• retire. If he continues to run now, his concentration is broken and he's lost valuable time. Stay down and cover your head, let the other runners safely pass over you, get up once it's clear. Later appear deflated and upset in front of cameras, claiming you'd tried your best and without that stumble the results would be different. A sympathetic audience collectively nods. Pity, but these things happen.
• continue. It's results that matter. A setback delays progress, but doesn't completely stop it. It means working harder to make up for the deficiency... are you up to it?

He took the latter option, getting to his feet and recommenced running. Ten minutes later, with only two laps left, he had not just caught up with the pack but hovered behind the first three.

With 200m to go, he'd moved up behind the frontrunner.

And just over 27 minutes since the starting pistol went, he romped home in first place, winning gold for Great Britain.

"Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man...

Sooner or later the one who wins is the one who thinks he can"

Mo didn't want to throw away all that investment - not just his, but his family, too. He'd promised his daughter Rihanna a medal and didn't want to let her down, nor his country... yet he didn't win on effort or energy, but on determination: the belief that he could.

Let's play Devil's Advocate here for a moment: suppose in an interview beforehand, Mo Farah was asked "what happens if you fall?" Would his response be: "I'd sit sobbing into my knees whilst other runners flowed around me, then hobble to the side tearfully, gasping to the cameras that I'd love to have brought home the gold but now I may need to reconsider my future."...? Or would would he cheerfully shrug with a dismissive: "I'll get up and carry on running!"...?

2. You are judged not by failure, but by your response to it.

Nobody has ever managed to avoid failure completely; life is a series of challenges awaiting to happen, and along the way failures occur. Some of us use these as a reason not to continue, to give up, a sign that we'll never succeed.

Others treat the failure as a lesson. Someone once told me "FAIL means First Attempt In Learning". What if they've tried a second time and still experienced failure? The response came back pretty quick: "then you learn the second way is not the path to success, reducing the number of routes by one". Thomas Edison stubbornly refuse to quit, famously trying over 1000 ways before achieving a working light bulb.

These are people who realise life's journey is paved with failures along the way; as soon as one hurdle is overcome, another awaits around the corner, relentlessly eroding progression and sapping morale. But they never give up, determined not to quit the journey.

There's a term for them: successful people.

And there are plenty of lessons we can learn from them.