The key to success is failure

The key to success is failure. And the more you fail, and the faster you fail, the quicker you get there.

But the catch that most people don’t realise is that this depends on your relationship with failure. Everyone’s relationship with failure is very different. But many see it as something that’s bad and as something that shouldn’t be happening. And they see it as something that is going to perhaps prevent them from getting where it is that they want to go.

Whereas, in fact, failure by design is there to give you the skills that you need to get to the next level. And the more you try to repel, the more you try repress, the more you try avoid the failures or push them away or try ignore the failures, the more they actually tend to repeat themselves.

Because when you ignore or hide your failures, you're not learning from them! You don't know what skills, experience or lessons could be gained from your failure because you're trying to run away from it. That's when they keep repeating.

And as a result, you experience more pain.

See, the biggest challenge for most entrepreneurs is not that they don’t have the ability to succeed. It’s just they don’t understand that failure is the key and the pathway to actually becoming successful.

Let’s say you’re a start-up and you want to make a million dollar business, you don’t have the skills to do that right now. And if you’re a three million dollar business and you want to build it into a 10 million dollar business, chances are, if you’re not a 10 million dollar business you don’t have the skills to do that right now.

In order for you to get those skills, you need to make a shit ton of mistakes to get the feedback to learn what you do need to do so that you know what you don’t need to do, so that you can keep moving forward.

But we walk around trying to succeed in life and be so precious that we are tiptoeing through life, trying to not make a mistake because god forbid we look bad in the eyes of other people around us.

Whereas, we actually don’t realise that those mistakes that you’re trying to avoid are the very things you need in order to get the lesson to go to the next stage.

You know, hindsight’s a beautiful thing.

Who’s ever had something really fucking bad happen, only for you to look back at it in a few months to go, “Oh, you know what? If it wasn’t for that thing, I wouldn’t be here. I’m so grateful for that”. Who’s had that, right?

Imagine doing that in the moment. Don't wait two years. Imagine doing it within 30 seconds.

And I do that by asking a couple of questions.

1. What is the benefit of this?
2. What am I learning from this?
3. What skills am I getting now that I didn’t have before?
4. How are they going to get me closer to where I want to go faster than what I’ll do without them?

And I find when I ask those four questions, the failure action turns into a huge lesson and the lessons give you skills and the skills actually give you the power to drive forward faster than what you would on your own.

Imagine from the moment every single thing in your life happens moving forward from this day, every bad thing that happens, every single thing, regardless of what it is, you go, “Oh my god, what am I learning right now? What is the benefit of this? How is this going to serve me? How is this going to build me? What is this going to bring me?”

And imagine living in a world like that.

So, the key to success is failure. Create a healthy relationship with failure. Learn to love the failure, embrace the pain, embrace the failure.

What is your relationship with failure?