Does failing make you a failure?

We all went to school at some point in our lives. We've been graded on our schoolwork and sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we failed. The schools have a system that defines the minimum acceptable standards for a child to pass into the next grade. And that's where we all got screwed up...

In the workforce, I never heard the words, "You failed at your job". I've been fired. I've let others go. Never have the words failure come up. I'm not saying we don't think them. I'm not even suggesting they have never been used. I'm just noticing that I have not heard the words, which is really interesting.

We hear things like:

"I'm sorry you didn't get the promotion".

"It's too bad you lost that client".

"Your proposal wasn't accepted".

"We can't afford to give you a raise".

"We don't have confidence in your abilities to take us to the next level".

All of those statements may suggest failure to us. Yet I believe failure is an illusion. We personalize an event and project it onto ourselves based on our experience as a student. Zig Ziglar said it best, "Failure is not a person, it is an event".

Some of us get so paralyzed by the fear of failure that we fail to pursue our dreams. Read that previous sentence again! We fail before we start because we are afraid to fail.

Let's deconstruct a World Class failure. Wade Boggs was a professional baseball player who played most of his career with the Boston Red Sox organization. Baseball tracks a players ability to get a hit with each at bat. His career hitting average was .328 (which is like 32.8%). Over a 17 year career, Wade Boggs failed to get on base twice more often than he succeeded. Yet he's one of the best hitters to ever play the game. Look at these numbers:

12 times an All-Star

5 batting titles

8 silver slugger awards

Number retired by one organization

Inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame

Failure is never a permanent condition. It sucks when it happens. A couple of years ago, I had a dream to start a coffee franchise. I did a lot of things right and I did a lot of things wrong. Unfortunately for me, the wrong things outweighed the right things. I've been told failing at business is something every person must go through to find success. I've read, "You didn't fail if you learn from your mistakes". Another one I heard was, "It's like a badge of honour, you're now a member of the club". My failure scars will always be with me. 

Any good salesperson will tell you that sales is a numbers game. I've read that the metric in some cases looks like this: Approach 10 people, 7 people will say no, 2 will say maybe and and 1 will say yes. Imagine how thick your skin has to be to hear the words "No" seven to nine times more often than "Yes". But any seasoned salesperson will explain that once they know the numbers, they expect "No". They welcome the failure. They know the quicker they get the failure out of the way, the sooner they will find the success.

School is not like sales. Imagine telling your grade 2 teacher, the quicker you fail me, the sooner I will succeed in my education goals.

Life is like sales. You have to try some stuff. Make mistakes. Learn from the mistakes. Try some more stuff. Make new mistakes. Learn from those mistakes. Try some even more stuff. You get the point. We need to fail to get to wherever we want to go in life.

Failure is not a bad word! It needs to happen in order for you to find success.

Ta ta for now!

"I never scored on 100% of the shots I didn't take".

-Wayne Gretzky