I just recently came across the term fail forward and I like it.
Every one of us has some instances in our earlier stages of life where we would do differently next time if we had a do over. But we rarely have an opportunity to have that do over with the same person in the same situation, so how we use that lesson is to conduct ourselves differently next time, or treat this person better than we treated that other person in our past. In essence, failing forward.
When we make a decision and take an action, at the moment we may have felt that we did the right thing. With a little time and perspective, we may later realize that we could have made a better choice.
None of us is without mistakes, but by learning from our mistakes, we will not keep making the same mistakes, so the term failing forward shows progress on our path. When we look at the story of successful businesses, we often see how success came after a person changed their initial concept and offered a different product or service than originally planned, and then found popularity.
Some of these errors were poor choices or mistakes, but rebounding from them is how we find our way forward.
A key in this concept is separating the fail from our concept of self. When we fail at something, that does not mean we are a failure, it means we have to find a different way to do things. When we do that, and find greater success, we can be proud of what we did.
A quote that makes the point is from basketball great Michael Jordan: "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
He was constantly aware of what he was doing and constantly looking for ways to do it better.
By the way, tools that were used by that great championship team included positive thinking and meditation. When people first heard about that, they thought that was weird for a sports team, but then after witnessing years of winning streaks, they thought there might be something to it.
Not talking about failures could bring up fear. Fear of failing again which could also discourage others from trying again. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Keep going.
Mistakes offer us teachable moments. Stepping out of our comfort zone to take another risk can be the key to opening the door for growth and success.
All of us make mistakes along our way, and in fact, you could say that we have to make some mistakes on our way to success in order to learn what we can do. If we have never failed, we have never tested our boundaries, abilities or capacity.
Of course we are not perfect on the way to creating our lives or our businesses because there will always be some trial and error and we should not be afraid of that.
The photo at the top is just a shrub that I saw while walking that I think is pretty. No hidden meaning.
I always love hearing from you, so if you feel like sending me a note, calling or coming to see me, please do!
Have a wonderful day!
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