Wednesday, June 21, 2006
How To Exploit Failure!
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation.
New strengths and insights that can follow from a humbling experience
If you’ve never known failure, you’re one of the lucky ones… perhaps.
Or does it just mean you’ve never known success either - just trogged along in that middle rut ?
The truth is that a high achiever who has never known failure is almost unheard-of. Time and again, great tycoons make their big leap in the wake of some kind of disaster. It may just be a long grim repair job that steadily builds character. It may be a case of learning important lessons directly from mistakes. Or it may be the famous ‘iron entering the soul’ after a searing humiliation. But you need to view both light and shade in order to form a sharp picture of the world you live in. And you will certainly lead a large workforce with more conviction if you are able to empathise with people on the wrong end of life.
The view from below
When you’re lying at the bottom of a well, that little circle of blue sky seems to you much more beautiful than it looks to people at the top. Those people are the ones who have never known failure.
This tells you that we should be a little wary of those whose path has been too smooth. Although well-qualified, successful and often doing useful work, they tend to mix only with their own kind, and their view of life lacks depth and contrast. And for all their high status, they will tend towards a dissatisfied state, because they take so much for granted.
Your experience of failure - hopefully coupled with other experiences of success - will provide a much more balanced view of the world, in which you can feel active, joyful gratitude for health and strength, light and heat, freedom and privacy. This endows you with a robust philosophy that will stand many tests, and bodes well for the next stage in your journey.
Victory out of defeat
Notice how new parliamentary candidates are always given an impossible seat to fight in their first election. Why do the parties go in for this apparently time-wasting exercise ? Because they want to see how the newcomer copes with failure. Is this the sort of person who gives up at the first setback ? Can they remain gracious and positive under the all-day-and-night pressures of being an MP ? Do they have the stomach for the long, hard struggles that may lie ahead ? One of these candidates - who lost four times running and almost quit - declared “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” And who was speaking ? One of the most ground-breaking politicians on earth: Margaret Thatcher.
Curio Corner
Post-it Notes - prime case of success through failure. That ‘non-adhesive’ fixative on the back was actually a failed version of a permanent adhesive that the 3M company was trying to develop. The failure was the one that succeeded!
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation.
New strengths and insights that can follow from a humbling experience
If you’ve never known failure, you’re one of the lucky ones… perhaps.
Or does it just mean you’ve never known success either - just trogged along in that middle rut ?
The truth is that a high achiever who has never known failure is almost unheard-of. Time and again, great tycoons make their big leap in the wake of some kind of disaster. It may just be a long grim repair job that steadily builds character. It may be a case of learning important lessons directly from mistakes. Or it may be the famous ‘iron entering the soul’ after a searing humiliation. But you need to view both light and shade in order to form a sharp picture of the world you live in. And you will certainly lead a large workforce with more conviction if you are able to empathise with people on the wrong end of life.
The view from below
When you’re lying at the bottom of a well, that little circle of blue sky seems to you much more beautiful than it looks to people at the top. Those people are the ones who have never known failure.
This tells you that we should be a little wary of those whose path has been too smooth. Although well-qualified, successful and often doing useful work, they tend to mix only with their own kind, and their view of life lacks depth and contrast. And for all their high status, they will tend towards a dissatisfied state, because they take so much for granted.
Your experience of failure - hopefully coupled with other experiences of success - will provide a much more balanced view of the world, in which you can feel active, joyful gratitude for health and strength, light and heat, freedom and privacy. This endows you with a robust philosophy that will stand many tests, and bodes well for the next stage in your journey.
Victory out of defeat
Notice how new parliamentary candidates are always given an impossible seat to fight in their first election. Why do the parties go in for this apparently time-wasting exercise ? Because they want to see how the newcomer copes with failure. Is this the sort of person who gives up at the first setback ? Can they remain gracious and positive under the all-day-and-night pressures of being an MP ? Do they have the stomach for the long, hard struggles that may lie ahead ? One of these candidates - who lost four times running and almost quit - declared “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” And who was speaking ? One of the most ground-breaking politicians on earth: Margaret Thatcher.
Curio Corner
Post-it Notes - prime case of success through failure. That ‘non-adhesive’ fixative on the back was actually a failed version of a permanent adhesive that the 3M company was trying to develop. The failure was the one that succeeded!
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation.
# posted by Carole Spiers @ 11:28 PM 
