Sunday, June 26, 2011

Quote of the Week

“Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they’re really not. They’re companions – the hero and the sidekick.” - Laurence Shames

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Fail your way to Success

We achieve success in all areas of our life by trying something new and learning from our mistakes. This starts during childhood and continues through our entire lives. When you learned to walk you failed many times. You fell down repeatedly until you learned to balance and built up the leg strength to hold yourself upright. When you learned to ride a bike you likely fell and scraped your hands or knees. But it was through trial, error and practice that you learned to ride. You have used this “learn-by-doing” approach your entire life. It has worked in the past and will certainly continue to work going forward.

If you never fail, if you never make mistakes you are not trying anything new, you are not pushing into new territory and you are not growing as a person, manager or leader. Failure is okay. Failure is necessary. As long as you learn from your mistakes and do not repeat the same mistakes over and over you are moving forward. So go ahead - own your mistakes and your failures. Examine what happened, what you expected to happen and what you could have done differently. It’s the “differently” that you can use the next time.

Just think how your life would be if you had the “golden touch”; if you never made mistakes and were successful in absolutely every endeavor you undertook. At first thought this might sound fantastic. You could be rich and you could be stress free. But in reality I say you would get very bored and would be very boring. What really fires our imagination and stirs our soul is the challenge of discovery and the quest for success. What makes people interesting are the stories about their challenges and the process they went through to overcome obstacles and ultimately find success.

I was coaching a staff member the other day and after helping her work up a plan of action to overcome a problem she looked up and asked “What if this doesn’t work?” I told her that she would then move onto plan B and if that did not go as expected than plan C etc, etc. If your current plan is not yielding the results you are looking for than simply make a change. Don’t get hung up on the fact that your original plan did not work. Learn from it, adjust and move forward. The more you learn the farther you will go and the more successful you will become. Mistakes and failures are going to happen. Embrace them as the learning opportunities that they are and then regroup and push onward.

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” – Henry Ford

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Quote of the Week

“It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you are not” – Denis Waitley

Monday, June 6, 2011

Quote for the Week

“Don’t let someone else create your world, for when they do they will always create it too small.” – Ed Cole