Hopefully you make a financial mistake now and again, because failure
can be good for you. If you haven’t made any mistakes for a while, you may
be playing it too close to your comfort zone and not stretching yourself far or
fast enough to achieve high goals. To aim high, you must accept the risks that
go with learning something new.
Risks come with the acceptance that you will make some mistakes,
but you will want to avoid making very costly mistakes or making the same mistake
over and over again. Use good sense. You will have your share of challenges, tests,
and failures in life. Yet all failures will help you learn more about yourself
and business and build your self-esteem.
Learn and Move On
I don’t like the word mistake. Mistakes are simply
challenges in disguise. Most of us don’t get it right the first time. Successful
people make mistakes all the time, but most of their failures go unnoticed because
they don’t give up—they keep going. They evaluate their failures,
come up with new solutions to the challenge, and try again—this time more
educated. They don’t allow the fear of failure to stop them from achieving
their goals.
If you hope to create fabulous success, study failure. Most highly
successful people are not successful from the beginning—they struggle to
reach their peak potential. Walt Disney was fired from his first job because he
was told that he was not creative enough. Luckily, he didn’t listen to his
boss and trusted his own innovative ideas.
We all tend to focus on success and fear failure when things don’t
go as planned. So don’t be too hard on yourself if you feel that you are
making too many mistakes. Hang in there and be patient. Once you overcome the
challenge, you won’t have to do it again—and you will be failing forward
faster.
Success takes time, just as it takes time for you to adjust and learn
new skills. Be aware that mistakes will continue to happen, even after you reach
a high level of success.
I’ve been an entrepreneur all of my adult life, and I’m
still making mistakes—and plan to keep making them. Once I have it all figured
out, I get bored. Making mistakes, turning them into challenges, and then overcoming
them is extremely rewarding. There is nothing that can challenge, motivate, and
build your confidence faster.
Mistakes and challenges will occur anyway, so the sooner you learn
from them, the sooner you will succeed.
Why Don’t We Teach Failure?
Failures tend to disappear from education curriculum. Information
about failures is often scarce or ignored; information on successful people and
their success strategies is everywhere.
Businesspeople who pursue unsuccessful strategies must either change
their strategies or go out of business. So why don’t we teach future investors
and entrepreneurs more about failure? Wouldn’t that save us a ton of money
from mistakes that could be avoided?
Can you imagine telling your banker to add an additional $20,000
for the mistakes that you plan to make in your new venture? They would think you
were crazy. Yet that is exactly what will happen as you develop the business.
You simply must make mistakes to see what works and does not work. It is necessary
to make mistakes as you grow and develop. Just remember: mistakes can indeed be
good for you. PE
