Whether you’re an HR guy, a journalist, an entrepreneur or a COO, the road to success is often paved with rejection and failure. The difference between those who succeed and those who fail comes down to whether or not they choose to rise above the criticism and soldier on. There are many people in this world who find some sad joy in seeing you fail, or maybe they just want to be successful, and jealousy or envy rears its ugly head. However, failure is often a critical ingredient on the path to success. There are many wildly successful people who can prove it.
A bullet wasn’t enough to stop Malala Yousafzai from fighting for girls’ rights to education in her native Pakistan. After Taliban fighters attempted to end the then 11-year-old’s life in 2009, she continued on her mission. “I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed,” she said, during her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 2014, at the age of 17. “The terrorists tried to stop us and attacked me and my friends who are here today, on our school bus in 2012, but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win.” Any criticism we get really does not compare to what Malala went through. Remember that.
Some days it seems like people are comfortable pointing out the failures of others as a reason to not try something new. They like to remain in their “safe zone”. Not everyone has to take a risk or even defend why they don’t. But what would be nice, is for everyone to be supportive of taking risks and making change. Be safe or take a chance. Abe Lincoln failed his way to the Presidency. He was defeated as a state legislator, congressman, senator, vice-president – and even had a nervous breakdown. “The difference between history’s boldest accomplishments and its most staggering failures is often, simply, the diligent will to persevere”, said President Lincoln.
Many of our peers try to hide behind this idea that they’re making the right decision based on good, solid evidence. Each failure that they can point out is a point for their views. It’s an argument for why they’re a lot smarter than those of us who take their best shot when the odds are stacked against us. As Jon Westenberg stated, “They can look back on their lives and feel comforted because hey, at least they didn’t #$#@ up like you did. They can avoid the pressure of trying something, and be confident in it.”
J.K. Rowling wasn’t the only bestselling author who thrived on rejection. In his biographical writing guide, "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft," Stephen King admits that in his early days as a writer he held onto a similar pile of rejections slips from publishers. Early in his career he would stack these slips on a nail hanging above his bed for motivation. “By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it,” he wrote. “I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”
Let’s talk about the other side of that coin. When you’re successful, after taking that risk and doing something you believe in, it throws a distinct spotlight on the people who never make the choice to do that. It then becomes a big case study in favor of us leaping into the unknown. Here is an inside secret, we can win and “they” do not have to lose. We can be successful together. What we all discover over time is that much of the time, we really aren’t even in a competition at all. Each win should be celebrated by us or for us. Every time someone we know succeeds with their idea, their project or their invention, it should be celebrated. Heck, it helps you refer to other great and successful people in your network.
One of my favorite personal stories of failure involves when I was up for a role early in my career, and I obviously did not get the job. I was told “you are just not OLD enough”. I was mad at the person who won the role because I felt we were competitors. I was understandably annoyed, but the person who did get the role was truly not my competition and they ended up embracing me beyond belief and became a mentor that I still engage with today (20+ years later).
Peer envy has become so rife in today's 'anything's possible' society that it's even got a name: Failed Potential Syndrome. This syndrome gets more acute with age, and can be disastrous for your mental health; it is everywhere. It's that feeling that somehow life has not quite blossomed for you in the way you thought it would, while your peers (usually the seemingly unambitious ones) soar to great heights. FPS is characterized by peer envy (check), failure to launch (check), and a general feeling that you haven’t quite achieved what you had expected to by a certain age (double check). Well, at least it’s good that I can finally diagnose myself? But here is the key point, when people are pointing fingers, remember all the success that were launched by failure! 3M post it notes, penicillin, the slinky, corn flakes, and the pacemaker were all made from mistakes. Yes, even the pacemaker. In 1956, Wilson Greatbatch was working on building a heart rhythm recording device at the University of Buffalo. He reached into a box and pulled out a resistor of the wrong size and plugged it into the circuit. When he installed it, he recognized the rhythmic lub-dub sound of the human heart. The beat, according to his 2001 obituary in The New York Times, reminded him of chats he had had with other scientists about whether an electrical stimulation could make up for a breakdown in the heart's natural beats
"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be" - John Wooden
Together. We. Win.
Dave Harmon
People Division
“Kindness is Currency”
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