The Push - Why Winners Fail The Most

"...no one fails more times than winners"

Have you ever been asked how you manage to succeed? Not the easiest of questions to answer especially considering that there are countless ingredients that you might or might not be aware of that collectively contribute towards your success. Of all the ingredients that go into cooking up success, there's one that is forever present - failure. Funny enough, this ingredient is both available to those that win and those that lose. I am convinced through observation that no one fails more times than winners, which may be true if they are the ones who keep - as our friend, Winston Churchill, said - 'moving from failure to failure without losing their enthusiasm'...But perhaps there is more to it.

"Failure is the onion of success..."

In our journey to achieving success in all that we desire to succeed in, we meet obstacles that test our commitment to the course. It is often the decision we take after each fall that will determine if we will remain on the path of success. At various points in our entrepreneurial, personal and professional journeys, we will encounter failure (note that failure is not a possibility but a certainty) and it is good that we fail, in fact, failure can be some of our most valuable experiences as it puts us in a better position to handle the situation should it present itself to us in future. Failure is the onion of success, it may cause you cry as you chop it up, but chop it you must if you hope to enjoy a serving of success. There is more to gain in failure than what is lost, and through sufficient encounters with failure, you will have more certainty in what works and what doesn't as you would know both sides well. A quick thought; Who would you rather have, the guide who knows only the right path or the one who has also had the past experience of being lost?

"Youth seeks to avoid mistakes..."

It took me a while to understand the value of failure. I was one who was very fixed on getting the right answer, in the right way, in just the right amount of time and boy oh boy, was I in for a big surprise when I ventured into entrepreneurship! Uncertainty is one domain which some people (myself included) preferred to avoid, this is because in uncertainty there is a higher likelihood that one might be wrong - which I have since learnt is totally fine. In the schooling system I was exposed to growing up, you had to get it right the first time. It was quite straight forward; the teacher asks the question >> you get it wrong >> they move to the next "better" learner (not so fast...lol...it wasn't that easy, you would also get punished for getting it wrong to begin with). I didn't see it then, but what that did was create a negative attitude towards failure which emphasized avoidance instead of analysis of failure. It is that same attitude that haunts us when we first get exposed to the domain of uncertainty. This is how I came to the reflective realization that youth seeks to avoid mistakes, whereas experience knows that in mistakes are hidden the true lessons of life. By youth I do not refer to those young by physical age, it is representative of any position one may find themselves in where they are not the most experienced person.

"The push..."

So what pushes winners? What fuels our quest for more? What makes the difference between those that win and those that don't? The answer is failure. Failure pushes the persistent and enduring man to success, the very same failure pushes the halfhearted man to quit. It is the poison and it is the cure and this is why winners will and forever will remain the ones to fail the most - they work with failure.

Go on, Chop that onion!