On failure and its importance

A couple of months ago, I failed.

One of the first actual, real, tangible failures I have had, business wise.

Lost clients. Lost business partners. I felt awful.

The skies crumbled on top of me.

For a couple of months, I was stricken with a very powerful and lasting feeling of guilt and a sense of shame.?

It should not have been that way.

I only soon realized how valuable the learnings from those failures could be.

I only soon realized that the people I thought I let down were doing ok without me and that the failure was not as large as I thought it was. It was more of a disappointment and a shock than a complete and utter meltdown of their company processes.

I started learning from my failures.

Failure taught me that I have to accept my mistakes and misjudgments fast and bring them in light of the team, otherwise I risk the fate of an entire project.

I learned that trying to multitask, micro-manage and try being Napoleon does not work and will never work. People with 30 businesses have 30 assistants. They do not try doing everything themselves - such as I did.

I came to the conclusion that, in the end, what truly matters is to deliver on your promises, not to overpromise and underdeliver.

Say you will move a chair. And move two. Instead of saying you will move the entire furniture from the living room to the bedroom and ending up only moving two chairs.

Try not to fail. Try not to disappoint the people that put their trust in you.

If you do fail, however, get up quickly, be honest and candid about your mistakes, and start working on improving yourself as fast as you can.

Failure is inevitable. At the very least, let us learn something from it.