“Failure”, is a word that no entrepreneur wants to hear! It's only human to make mistakes, but we tend to hide our failures and be ashamed of them. If everyone makes mistakes, then what makes us so afraid of it?
It was Sir Winston Churchill that said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm". Failure being undoubtedly one of the most demotivating experiences you can go through. The best way to overcome the feelings associated with failure is to stay motivated by channeling your energy into another project. It is important to shift your focus towards something positive, like working on another goal that you had previously set for yourself.
Don’t let your failure define you; let it instead be a definition of your success story! Just because you have failed at a specific task does not make you a failure in any way. To quote Mr Thomas Edison, "I have never failed. I just found 10,000 ways that didn't work."
The first step to rehabilitation is acceptance. Do not be ashamed of being at fault, as you will learn more from your mistakes than by any other means. By turning a failure into a learning experience you are taking a negative situation and turning it into something positive and most importantly, the experience you gained will help you avoid making the same mistakes again. It will be your best teacher, as it will teach you to work hard, be patient and stay humble. Once you have learnt these lessons you will be on the path to success. If you can't accept your failure and move on, then you will be permanently stuck in a place where you are feeling sorry for yourself. It is important for you to accept and understand that there is nothing that you can do to change what has happened, all you can do is pick yourself up and move on. Another famous quote from Sir Winston Churchill, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Coco Chanel said “Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.” But failure is unfortunatly sometimes inevitable. Therefore, it is important to make sure that you are fully prepared to deal with it when it arrives. One of the most effective ways to make sure you are fully ready and capable to deal with failure is to read books on the subject. Albert Einstein said "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new".
You are probably wondering why we are quoting all these successful and renowned people? They all have one thing in common, they all failed alot!
Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something. So when you fall down get back up because that's what true entrepreneurs do. As Michael Jordan said, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Lets conclude with this final note from Robert F. Kennedy “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
