Tom Watson (CEO of IBM)
“If you want to succeed – double your failure rate”
Alexander Pope
“To err is human, to forgive divine”
John Maxwell wrote:
Failure is not avoidable
Failure is not an event it is how you deal with life along the way.
Failure is not objective, you are the only person who can really label your mistake as a failure. Your perception of and response to your mistakes determine whether your actions are failures.
Failure is not your enemy, the person who never makes a mistake takes his orders from the one who does!
Failure is not irreversible.
“In Texas there is an old saying:
“It doesn’t matter how much milk you spill as long as you don’t lose the cow”
Keep everything in perspective.
Failure and mistakes are not permanent markers.
Failure is not ‘Final’
Thomas Edison
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”
Zig Ziglar
“The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most, for what you want now”
What do you really want?
What do you really want now?
Change how you look at failure or mistakes!
“I have learned in whatever state I am in, to always be content”
- Bill Gates first company ‘Traf-O-Data’ was a complete disaster
- Walt Disney was told he lacked creativity and was fired from his job at a newspaper
Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If you change the way you see failure, you gain the strength to keep running the race.
I had to do just that – change the way I look at failure. I needed to make a choice, lift up my head and humbly try again.
Once I redefined failure for myself, the rest came naturally, it was hard but worth the effort.
If you are in a ‘Desperate Place’ here is a guideline for how I re-created my viewpoint of life:
7 tips about how I started with a “make-over”:
- I had to re-define failure. Acknowledge my failures/mistakes and turn them into stepping stones
- The second thing I had to do was to steel myself against judgment and ridicule. The rocks/stones in life and what people throw at you, use it to build an altar. To stand behind the pulpit and preach or to lead the worship, was so extremly challenging, even more so when I looked at some of the expressions on their faces. Luckily the Bible teaches us: “Do not look upon their faces”
- I set aside 40 days for Fasting and Prayer. The result was a transformation of my Body, Soul, and Spirit.
- I made a decision to sacrifice what I really enjoy and want now, for what I really really want most! I had to ask myself questions like…Why is this so important to me?
What brought me to this point?
What is it costing you?
What would you feel like when everything comes to a point of success? - Create/Develop a strategy/plan…Create boundaries in relationships
Hold myself to a ‘Higher Standard’
Plan as if everything already was in place
- Commitment…To the Lord
To myself
To my family - Every day I had to make the same decision over and over again….until it became part of who I am!
Do not let your past dictate your future
God’s word has the highest authority
The best is yet to come
