How to fail forward into success...
How to fail forward into success...
We tend to be our own worst critics.
As business owners, we hold ourselves to a higher standard of performance because we choose a life that doesn’t offer us any guarantees in the first place.
Of course, in times like these guarantees are few and far between anyway...but that’s a story for another day.
It follows that we hold ourselves to often impossible standards.
It’s tempting to think that as freelance copywriters we’re not quite ready for the big show…
One more course…
One more Zoom live…
One more time through Robert Cialdini’s book…
And then we’ll put ourselves out there.
That’s not a useful way to think.
If you’re a real writer you’ll never really be happy with anything you publish.
A mentor of mine recently told me that if you look back at things you wrote 6 months ago and cringe then you’re doing great, it means you’re evolving and you can see how far you’ve come.
It also means you can see the cringe-worthy mistakes you made that now seem so painfully obvious.
But it’s a million times better to make mistakes that propel you forward in the real world than never taking your plans off the paper and testing them.
As the saying goes, “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
I prefer the other version by the great American poet, ex-heavyweight champion Mike Tyson who said, “ everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face.”
I highly suggest that if you’re just starting out, that you go and get punched in the face and build your business in the real world.
It’ll suck to start…
You’ll take some hits and hopefully, you’ll have a few successes as well.
Over time, you’ll learn how to make success a habit.
A few months down the line you’ll look back and wonder how you could have ever been that green and naive.
You’ll make changes and you’ll switch up your strategies a bit...and you’ll keep evolving.
That’s how you fail forward into success.
I wonder what I’ll think when I reread this article 6 months from now...
Now go get it!