Swing Through Failure

      "Leaders learn from failures while most others avoid them," Orrin Woodward.  The question is why such an avoidance of failure?  Did you avoid failure when you were learning to walk? Did you avoid failure when you were learning childhood games?  Why then do we fear it now?  The older we get the more conditioned we become by our culture that "failure is fatal".  "What will people think of me?" is the self talk we listen to.  This mind frame then becomes the biggest reason we hold ourselves to a settle-for-lifestyle, a justification to not do our best!
     In Orrin's book Resolved he states, "Perseverance is one of the traits that all long term successful people have in common."  The ability to fail forward.  Failure is not only part of perseverance but an essential part of success.  Imagine making a decision to start a new hobby.  You decide to take up golf.  You watch the golf channel you go out to the local golf course and watch people hit balls, you talk with successful golfers but because of your fear of failure you don't ever swing the club. You say to yourself, I will study the game and then go out and show the world that I am a success!  After three months you finally decide you are ready, so you go to the golf course and tee up the ball on the first tee. You address that ball, pull back the club and proceed to miss the ball several times before eventually shanking it into the trees!!  WHAT DID YOU EXPECT WOULD HAPPEN?!  You can study the game forever but if you don't get out and continue to swing the club through repeated failure to ultimately succeed you may as well just watch the golf channel and live through others' successes!
It is easy to see in this example that we wouldn't learn the game this way.We understand that we have to put in the time if we want to be good at THIS GAME.  What about the game of life?  We are capable of so much, but we allow a warped view of failure to hold us back. Success needs failure.  Success does not come without it.  It is a package deal.
     Orrin and the Life Personal Development system have taught me that success is getting back up after each failure knowing because I did, I am that much closer to success.  I don't fear failure anymore in life because I realize that I must welcome it as part of that package deal.  If I want to succeed faster then the answer is fail faster!  You must reframe your view of failure.
As far as the self talk, what will people think of me?  As Chris Brady says "When you are on your death-bed the farthest thing from your thoughts is what people think of you!"  Living a life of no regrets means to go for it all!  Swing the club as many times as you can, all the way to success!

God Bless

Marc