Learning to Let Failure Be Your?Fuel
I have no idea what I’m doing…
That was (and still is) the perpetual thought going through my head when I decided to change careers and jump into sales. It has been 30 days, but the fear of failure and being an imposter is something that I still face every morning.
“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.” - Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
I’m generally a competitive person, but when you sit behind spreadsheets and slide decks, the ability to track failure/success on a daily basis is next to impossible. The impact is nuanced and very hard to measure. But not in sales. Every day when you wake up and see $0 in closed ARR, you know where you stand.
The ability to measure and track production is incredible for professional growth. Or rather, it has the potential to be incredible for professional growth, if you are able to absorb the data as a way to iterate, improve, and get better.
I'm still learning how to let the pain of losing fuel me to become better, and not be a justification for blaming others / making excuses.
It is next to impossible to know the causality of certain results in our daily lives. Did X lead to Y? Or did Z and A also have an influence? And further, did I impact these results (or lack thereof) or was it something outside of my control?
This complexity offers us a way out of taking ownership of the results, and our lives. Because a causality cannot be proved, we make excuses or place blame on others for not reaching our goals, rather than using it as a way to analyze where we went wrong and how we can improve.
What I am learning through this journey is that mindset trumps talent all day, every day. And that the top performers are those that take complete ownership over their results and use the sting of failure as the fuel that takes them to newer, higher levels of achievement.
They love the sting of losing. They don't succumb to pointing fingers. They take ownership and get better.
It's a process that I'm still fumbling through. We all have infinitely more potential than we give ourselves credit for.
But it's on us to act on it.
You with me?