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“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” — Thomas Edison
Your journey towards your goal may not be as easy as expected, but the twists and turns you face are what makes it worthwhile. Some of the greatest successes are by the people that dared to fail — but they did not give up!
Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” He was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.” As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius
Many people respond to a crisis by being overwhelmed by stress, which turns to fear. It is easy to be afraid when you have a crisis situation in your business, but if you remain brave, your employees will be too, and together a strong team will be able to turn anything around.
For example, Fred Smith the founder of Federal Express, received a “C” on his college paper detailing his idea for a reliable overnight delivery service. His professor at Yale told him, “Well, Fred, the concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’ grade, your ideas also have to feasible.”
And Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim on the grounds that it would only attract riffraff.
From rejection to workplace screw-ups, everyone has experienced that all-too-familiar gut-wrenching numbness. The great paradox is that the people who enjoy the most successes often endure the greatest failures.
A few common sense things for you to remember:
Don’t lose confidence in yourself when things don’t go as planned. I cannot stress this enough and talk about this in my book Moving Up. We are all a work in progress. But if you don’t take the time to critique yourself and your behaviors along the way, you run the risk of becoming complacent.
Improve your relationships with people because it is your relationships with people that make you successful in both life and business. If you discover that the same issues continue to arise, it’s time for some tough self-examination.
It takes hard work to make dreams into reality. If you set clear goals, have self-confidence to act, believe you will succeed over time, you will get to where you want to go. Sitting still is easy. Make sure you look at all aspects of your life and make some changes.
Get regular exercise. The benefits are a sense of health and youthfulness, increased physical and mental energy, well-being, productivity, and success.
Out-learn the competition. Be obsessed with learning and be a voracious reader.
Get plenty of rest. A habit of successful people should include an early start and will also allow you to get more done
Ask. There are always people that we can learn from. Everyone has a mentor that helps them on their path to success. If you believe in yourself, there is no one more qualified than you to jump on opportunities that come up!
Make time for your family. You don’t have to give up your personal life and enjoyment completely. Make a schedule that includes time for work and also time for weekends away, hobbies and family life. Too much of anything isn’t a good thing.
To reach for success and to overcome hardships or failures, we have to strive for the best we can be in every aspect of our lives, including how we feel about ourselves and how we treat others. If we are willing to try, to get back up after falling and to take advantage of opportunities, those bad moments can be nothing but a footnote in our success story.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].
