Michael Jordan commented “I failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” That very quote has become a marketing campaign for Nike as seen by the below 30 second clip.
Sports provide great insights into failure because each year every individual, competitor or team is trying to win a contest/match/game/race, then their respective league/division and eventually championships. Inevitably, there can only be one champion crowned each year.
Here are a few nuggets of wisdom on failure I’ve read and heard over the years. I hope they are valuable to you and help you overcome your next failure in business or life. They cover a wide array of successful tips including Fear, Planning, Quitting and Attitude.
- Seth Godin, a best-selling author (My favorite books of his are Unleashing the IdeaVirus and Tribes) encourages people to not be afraid of bad ideas because you have to incur some duds as part of the process of finding great ideas. He also encourages people to “Try something different, not harder.” Examples of smarter business would include using sales analytics, Google Analytics or Woopra for your website or perhaps, if your company is big enough, having a dedicated financial analyst to look for trends in the business).
- One of my personal favorite quotes comes from the legendary professional cyclist Lance Armstrong. Lance won the Tour De France, a 3-week 2,000 mile race a record 7 consecutive times in the Late 1990s and Early 2000s. His mindset is amazing when he comments on quitting, something I’m sure his body has screamed out thousands of times during training or the race itself:
“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever” – Lance Armstrong
Technology entrepreneurs provide some great insights as well:
- Kevin Rose, Founder and CEO of Digg, provided entrepreneurs this sage advice when he said “Build, release and iterate. Make a list of the features you want to create over the next six months and get going! For small companies, once a week; for larger companies, maybe twice a month.” via ReadWriteWeb
- Loic LeMeur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic, a social networking publishing platform, gave some similar thoughts in his speech on Social Media in Marketing at the Standford Business School (8 minute video).
Personal Development Leaders can provide some nuggets of wisdom regarding failure and the path to success:
- Earl Nightengale, a leader in the personal development industry in the 50s through 80s, told people “20 ideas a day towards your goal equals 100 ideas per week. Try some of them and move towards your goal.” Earl Nightengale’s “The Strangest Secret” was the first Gold Record record for ANY genre back in 1956.
- Harvey MacKay, best selling author/speaker recently posted to Facebook “To triple your success ratio, triple your failure ratio.”
The 2nd half of the year has begun here in 2010. What will each of us do (professionally and personally) to learn from our previous failures, dust ourselves off, and begin another attempt at greatness? What are we capable of accomplishing if we push ourselves and don’t quit?
Dan Ross
P.S. Below are three more great videos regarding failure. The first one asks “What are you capable of doing if you give it push towards your goals with EVERYTHING you have?” The second video is about some famous failures and how the people overcame them. The third and final video, by Honda, embraces failure as the route to success in their engine development.
