Failure is something that most people try to avoid at all costs - often the fear of failure prevents us from taking action, or at least trying. But if we think about it, we will all understand that failure is an essential part of success. There is no success without failure. How many times does a baby fall before it learns to walk? The child does not yet think about its actions, so it will keep trying to walk until it succeeds. In doing so, it accepts the risk of falling and hurting itself.

 

An important lesson we have to learn as adults and apply again and again is not to let our thinking stand between us and the success we want.

Children do not realise that "falling down" is a "failure", a "failure" to walk. They laugh and giggle with an "oops", or maybe cry, but they get back on their feet and try again. Over time, they learn that it hurts when we fall over on our bike or fail a test at school. This trains us to largely avoid failure in adulthood. In many cases, we simply stop trying when we think we won't succeed in order to avoid the pain.

A hoover salesman knows from experience that he has to ring an average of 10 doors before he sells a hoover. He does not know which of these 10 people he will speak to will become his customer. He may first have to speak to 18 people to get rid of a hoover and then make his next sale two doors down. He knows that 90% of his attempts will be unsuccessful, but for him it pays to fight for the remaining 10%.

To improve his turnover and therefore his success, he increases his workload by 50%. Instead of ringing 20 doors, he now rings 30 in order to achieve the prospect of a turnover of 3 hoovers. In doing so, he increases his income opportunities by 50%, but also his failures.

Most people believe that success and failure run in completely opposite directions. However, they actually run in parallel, as they are inextricably linked. If we think that they run in opposite directions, after a few failures we believe that we have moved in the wrong direction and turn around. But in doing so, we also turn away from success, which runs parallel in the same direction.

Failure is not the same as failure. After a few failures, we must try to adapt and slightly change our methods in order to find the parallel path to success.

Turning back after a negative experience and stopping trying for fear of failure is the easier path in the moment, but it doesn't take us where we want to go. Continuing despite the fear of failure is the brave and smart way. The more courageously we fight against our fear of failure, the easier it becomes over time. Mistakes and rejection bounce off us at some point because we only want to strive towards our goal. We have to learn that the mistakes we make will help us to achieve this goal.

People are celebrated for their successes, not for their mistakes. The path of every successful person is paved with mistakes and failures, but nobody sees these in the face of their success.

Have the courage to act in the face of fear and accept failure. Increasing the risk of failure ultimately leads to more success.

The path to success lies in the willingness to fail.