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Transcript of Turning Your Greatest Failures Into Your Greatest Success
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TURNING Y OUR GREATEST F AILURES INTO Y OUR GREATEST SUCCESS
Page i
TURNING Y OUR GREATEST
F AILURES INTO Y OUR GREATEST
SUCCESS
O UR FAILURES ARE NOTHING MORE
THAN OPPORTUNITIES TO ACHIEVE
THE GREATEST SUCCESS WE HAVE
EVER IMAGINED
Written by Joe Tillman
Founder of The Child Protection Community
www.TheChildProtectionCommunity.net
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories
TURNING Y OUR GREATEST
F AILURES INTO Y OUR GREATEST
SUCCESS
© 2010 Joe Tillman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may bereproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means
without written permission from the author.
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TURN Y OUR GREATEST F AILURES INTO Y OUR GREATEST V ICTORIES
page i
I f you w ish to be loved, show more of
your faults than your virtues.
~ Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Each generation goes further than the
generation preceding it because it
stands on the shoulders of that
generation. You w ill have opportunities
beyond anything we've ever known. ~ Ronald Reagan
I don't like people who have never fallen
or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless andit isn't of much value. Life hasn't
revealed its beauty to them. ~ Boris Pasternak
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories page i
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Never underestimate the experience……………..page iv
Do you have conviction ……………………………page 6
Lead follow or get out of the way…………............page 7
Chapter 2
Lying with dogs really will get you fleas……………..page 9
A glassmaker a blacksmith does not make………….page 10
A work in progress……………………………………………page 11
Be prepared……………………………………………………..page 11
Tools of the trade……………………………………………..page 12
What does vs what does not………………………………page 14
Experience must be earned, it can not be
given………………………………………………………………page 15
Looking back it all makes sense now………………….page 16
One failure at a time………………………………………...page 17
Chapter 3
Helping youself helps others…………………………….page 18
It does not matter if it is good or bad…………………page 19
Hindsight is 20/20…………………………………………..page 20
If I had it to do over again…………………………………page 20
Know this though…………………………………………….page 22
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories ii
List of Illustrations
Pictures
Your journey your choice………………………….. Page 7
Faith………………………………………………………..Page 8
Everyone has failures………………………………..Page 12
Within everyone’s path……………………………...Page 15
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories iii
Introduction
For everyone that has had failures in their lives and
wondered why?
Turn Your Greatest Failure into Your Greatest Victory
We all have failures; even the most successful person youcan think of right now has had their share of them. It is not
the failures that define a person, it what they do with those
experiences that do. All people in all industries, regardless of
race, religion or faith, political party, doctrine, stature, or
income level have failed at one time or another. Failures are
a part of every human beings journey through this life.
Without failures we have no gauge with which to
measure our successes. Failure knows even the greatest of
men, it humbles the most proud, and it serves us all
throughout our lives. It is the catalyst to end stalemates in
our progress towards a goal.
Failure is not the end, but the beginning step in solving
the most complex or the simplest concern we may have.
Failure is not the end of the road, but one less step we must
take to find success.
Turn You Greatest Failure into Your Greatest Success
Joe Tillman
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories iv
Chapter 1
Never underestimate the
experience
" Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do
whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you
are and are willing to work with a power that is greater
than ourselves to do it.”
El la W hee le r W i lcox
We all wish there was a magical button we could just
push to get us to our desired end result. The truth is that
there is not a desired end result that has a magical shortcut.
Not one worth having anyways. Besides, it is not the end
result we should be focused on so much. It is the journey in
getting there and the person we will have become in that
process. Who we are looking at in the mirror, once we have
arrived.
Each journey we make in life is worth its weight in gold, if
we learn from our process’s that we go through during that
journey. While the end result is not as valuable as the lessons
we learn along the way. It is the journey that makes us or
breaks us, depending on how we use the information from
that experience. It does not matter if we have failed or
succeeded thus far. The lesson in our process is the truest
treasure we must not fail to grasp and recognize our need to
hold onto. What we learn from our failures or from our
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 5
victories is something no one else can ever take away from
us. Once we earn it, we own it, and it is ours.
We put it in a place inside us that no one else can
find. Sometimes we forget where we have put that
knowledge from experience, either because we have
truly forgotten it, or because we have chosen to forget
it. Perhaps it was too painful to relive and so we
stored it in the furthest parts of our memories, with
forgetting it not being possible to have happened fast
enough. Perhaps it has been years since we last saw it,
yet it is still there. Waiting on us to call upon our past
experiences and knowledge to help us with anything
we can use it for today.
We each have those lessons of failure and success’s, they
complement each other. Do you realize that without the
failures we have had in our life, that our successes would be
boring and mundane? It’s in our greatest hour of
hopelessness that the mother of necessity brings about the
change that must happen. That change is instructed from
deep within our memories of what does and does not work.
Simply put, it sometimes takes a crisis and a string of
failures to get us to look in every place possible for a new solution. When we find ourselves in one of the many
hopeless situations life throws at all of us, it’s in that moment
that we have an opportunity. Our greatest choice in those
situations that we will have an opportunity to make is what
we will do next.
The two obvious choices and the most popular are to try something new or to repeat the same things we have already
failed with. There is a third choice to be considered though, if
we are brave enough and strong enough, we can dig up those
things we own, learn from the way in which we failed with
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 6
One person with a belief
is equal to a force of
ninety-nine who haveonly interests. Peter Marshall
them and apply them to our situations right now, in a whole
new way.
Knowing them better than any new choices we could
make. We know why they did not work if we stop to think
about it. Simply put, we can learn from the past mistakes we’ve already made and go forward in a new way, a better
approach, all based on our past failures. It’s that old once we
earn em’ we own em’ philosophy.
“If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall
into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned
for you? Not much.” Jim Rohn
Do you have conviction
Conviction is worth its weight in gold. If you truly believe in
something it will come across to those people you arecommunicating with by sheer accident. The same is true if you do
not believe in something, you are still convicted on it and it still
comes across. Either way it will come across and it will be noticed.
People have the uncanny ability to sense when someone is
sincere in what they are talking about. This applies to either end of
the spectrum, whether you are for something or against it, it isnoticed. Now you can pretend for a while, fooling a few people, a
few times. Yet rest assured you cannot, and will not, fool all the
people, all the time.
One of the first questions
I always ask myself is do I
believe in what I am doing?This is vital in the fact that if I
do, then I will not have to try
very hard to share that with
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 7
others. If I do not, then I am doing a whole lot of convincing
and the end result is a lot of frustrated people, with me being
the biggest of them all.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way
So many times we are sitting still, not moving in any
productive manner. This is at most times our fault, for poor
planning. At others times it can be circumstances out of our
control, yet do we truly have to remain still? It is in times like
this that we should ask ourselves, when we can remember
too, what is really going on. Why am I standing here doing
nothing, is it because I am waiting on someone else?
Your journey your choice
Sometimes my answers will surprise me. I would be
willing to bet that yours probably has the ability to do the
same.
I need only to decide if I am leading today, following, or
getting out of the way? Sometimes I am getting in the way of
myself more than anyone else ever could have.
The circumstances we find ourselves in do not have to
dictate whether we are effective in our efforts to achieve
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 8
anything. They are simply opportunities to learn at worst,
and at best, opportunities to carry us through to the next
level of growth in our lives. Truth be told, they are one in the
same, perception is in the eyes of the beholder. We simply
have a choice as to how we will look at it and if or how we
will apply it……….
Action creates action, as inaction stands to parent
inaction. We all foster some kind of action in our lives day to
day. What and how that action occurs can be traced back to
our steps taken. We all encourage some kind of growth
everyday and it is the ripple effect from that growth thatmakes our actions or our inactions so easily read by others.
We have all heard the saying; the proof is in the pudding.
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 9
Chapter 2
Lying with dogs really will give you
fleas
" The key is to keep company only with people who uplift
you, whose presence calls forth your best.
Ep ic te tus "
The law of attraction is simply this; likeminded people
will attract likeminded people. If we are trying to get
somewhere and not sure how to get there, then doesn’t it
make sense to follow people who have already been there? If you want something out of life, the best way to learn how to
get it, is to simply surround yourself with those that are
doing what you want to do. Those that have what you want to
have. Those that are going where you want to go.
Would it make sense to follow a lost person? I would not
think so if you were serious about trying to get to wherever
you are going. Are you serious about going where you want
to go or are you just along for the ride?
• Wealthy people do not stand in line for lottery tickets, why?
• When was the last time you saw a pastor at the bar getting
drunk, why?• Animal rights groups do not hold dog fights, why?
That is not where they are trying to go. Those are not the
things they are trying to do in life; in some cases it’s the
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 10
opposite. That is not the way they want to live or the way they
want to be seen by others. Why would they?
These are extreme examples and probably bring to mind
the extremes of different personalities. Yet they make a good
point. When we want to see why we are stuck in our presentcircumstances, it may very well be that all we need do is
simply look around us, at who we are walking through life
with. Sometimes that is as simple as walking over to our
mirror. The hard part is being able to face the person we are
looking at once we gather the courage up to go there.
While no one is any better than the next, it does stand to
reason that we are all created equal, it’s just that some of us
make better decisions than the rest. What decisions have you
been making in your life? Are you going to the bar just for
the peanuts?
A glass maker a blacksmith does not make
If I wanted to learn how to make glass, I would most
certainly not go to a blacksmith to see what advice he could
offer. I could stand around all day waiting on him to change,
and to tell me how to make glass. Yet even if he were to try to
tell me how to make glass, would it be the best advice I couldhave on the subject? Probably not, his experience would be
limited and his knowledge would be as well.
Even if I wanted to follow his advice, what kind of glass
would I end up with anyways? He might have seen it done a
few times, and might even know a few of the procedures
from watching other people do it. Yet the end result would
not be the best I could get for my time and effort. Truth be
told, I would not want to waste my time or resources
listening to him on anything but blacksmithing.
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 11
A work in progress
True leaders are born, not made right? Well I am sure
that point can be made in any direction you wanted to, yet
history tells us that all great leaders have failures and that
they also possessed the ability to learn from them. That wasone of the keys to their success. Without failures we have no
gauge with which to measure our successes. It is our failures
that provide the light towards which we may see our paths to
success.
Judging someone simply by their failures is nothing
more than the opportunity presenting itself for us to learn
from someone who has been there. Keep in mind though, if
we look at their present status and the path they are walking
now, we can judge whether we should listen to them or not.
Are they recreating the same actions that lead them to fail in
the first place? If so you might want to distance yourself from
them, you do not have to jump off a cliff just becauseeveryone else is doing it. The best predictor of future
behavior is past behavior.
Be prepared
The path to success is simply when opportunity meets
preparation. To be prepared for something is to have
foreseen it coming and known what to look for. To have
expected it, and based on experience known what not to do
in most cases. At least in this example you have a better
chance of success.
That’s how our failures become the keys to our greatestsuccesses. We can and will at times amaze ourselves at our
ability to work our way through what at the time seems like
the most difficult or next to impossible situation imaginable.
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You want to know a secret on how that works? It is us
drawing from that place we stored our failures, and pulling
out what we needed. Our being able to sort through all the
“does not works” from our past, and pulling out a solution
for the situation at the time. It’s a mental process based on
past experiences, of elimination.
Each of us has that ability to do just that, it is that we
must have the courage to face our failures, as not just a
failure. We must realize that those failures are tools that we
have earned, and if we use them to our advantage, we can
overcome more and more problems as they arise.
Making our effectiveness more and more directly
accurate in affecting the solutions we discover throughout
our lives. Our problem solving skills improve as our learning
curve generates for us, more and more answers based on our
experiences. Whether they are successes or failures. It does
not matter as long as we learned from them, where else would life’s must have answers come from anyway? They
came from our experiences
Everyone has failures
Tools of the trade
I like to use the example of a carpenter in this next
section. The reason why, is that one of my favorite people in
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history was one. Also that it is the best example I can give on
this next point.
Imagine for a second a young man is going to learn how
to build houses. He is young and has no experience, no tools,
and no job history.
This young man has no money for the tools of the trade,
yet the company goes out and purchases everything he will
need. They give him a brand new hammer, saw, measuring
tape, tool belt, boots, pencils, and nails, everything he is
going to need. As a matter of fact, he has everything that a
seasoned carpenter has. He has all the right tools.
Now let’s peek in on his first day of work. He shows up
on time, and is eager to get started. They start him off
measuring plywood for flooring. They have him calling out
the measurements for them to cut the needed plywood with.
Yet he cannot seem to get the measurements right? Every measurement he calls out to the man on the table saw is off.
Nothing is fitting how it is supposed to. This young man,
although he has the tools, the brand new measuring tape, he
does not know how to use it yet. It is basically useless in his
yet inexperienced hands. It looks good though; he looks like
he knows exactly what he is doing! That is until you ask him
to use it.
They decided maybe he would be better at driving nails
for a while, so they move him over to driving nails. He has a
nice heavy hammer, the same as the other men on the job.
The other carpenters are driving nails in one swing, sinking
them home! Before long, this young man ends up withseverally beaten and bruised hands, as well as a lot of nails
bent over and unsafe framework. His arms are sore, and he
ends up asking for a smaller hammer. Thus he has to work
twice as hard as the other men.
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 14
He had a brand new hammer though, yet without the
knowledge of how to use it, he fails, and miserably so at that.
Talk about insult to injury!
W hat does vs. wha t does n ot?
The young man is going to need time and mistakes to
figure this thing out. He is going to need a string of failures
to learn what not to do, way before he can figure out what
does work. Does this mean he will not be a good carpenter?
No, it simply means that he has a learning curve to go
through before he will improve. He will have a mental list of what does not work figured out from experience, way before
he has a list of what does, from experience.
The only way we ever figure out what does work is to
figure out what does not work. Each of us has a different rate
of learning and method.
Yet some of the most painful lessons are the ones we
grow the most from. I would be willing to bet that the young
man figures out driving nails way before he figures out
measuring boards. Why, because the mistakes made in
measuring are not nearly as painful as the ones in driving
nails.
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 15
Within everyone’s path
Experience m ust be earned , it cannot be
given
Just because someone has all the tools of the trade does
not mean they know how to use them. Experience is
something that is earned and never given. There we go again
wishing for that magic button!
Now this poor young man has all brand new tools but he
does not have the knowledge of how to use them yet. They
are basically useless in his hands. What if this young man
said “I am going to go ask my brother the electrician how to
be a good carpenter tonight when I see him?”
Do you think his chances of him becoming a good
carpenter are going to improve based on his brother the
electrician’s advice? Probably not, he would most likely want
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to ask someone that is doing what he is trying to learn to do,
how to do it. Perhaps say another carpenter?
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve
the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it
hard to plan the day.
E. B. W hi t e
Looking back on the point at hand, we can see several
things.
• Experience is earned never given
• Sometimes the most valuable mistakes, are the
most painful ones
• Advice from the wrong people will not help us to
succeed at what we are trying to figure out
• Everyone has a learning curve, …………….everyone
Looking back it all makes sense now
Speaking of painful learning experiences I remember
learning to ride my first bicycle with my dad being the
instructor. It was a small red bicycle with training wheels on
it and I loved that bicycle, riding it every chance I could get.
One day my dad decided it was time to take the training
wheels off. I was horrified once I tried it and realized how
hard it was without them, I begged for him to replace them
before I got hurt! My mother agreed, and I thought I had a
case. Wrong, my dad was ex- Navy, and when he decided
something there was no turning back.
I guess he could have allowed me to practice on grass but
not his son. No, we went straight to the basketball courts,
rough concrete and all. After about three attempts I was
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 17
convinced he was trying to kill me, or at the minimum maim
me for life.
I became good at escaping the crash at first, not because
I could ride the bicycle any better. No, it was because I got
real good at knowing when the exact moment the ship wasgoing down and I would abandon it.
While this lead to some small scale scrapes and cuts, it
was nothing like sinking with the ship I can assure you. After
a while though I got to where I had enough bad experiences
figuring out what did not work, then a magical thing
happened, I actually began to ride that bike with no help at
all.
One failur e at a tim e
It was a painful experience; no I did not have a helmet or
knee pads either. I guess that’s child abuse now days? Thepoint is though, that I learned how to ride that bike, one
failure at a time. I never figured out what worked until I
learned what did not work and narrowed down the
possibilities of what to do next that I was successful.
It would have been easier and less painful to ride that
bike if he would have just told me how to do it. Yet can youreally teach someone to ride a bike just by telling them.
No I learned the same way everyone else does. The only
thing that could have been more painful would have been
trying to learn how to do it from someone that had never
done it before.
The other option I had was to give up altogether. At the time
I was horrified, but now I am glad I did it. Every fall taught
me one more way something did not work. This principle
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 19
Chapter 3
Helping yourself helps others
Ex p e r i e n ce - t h e w i sd o m t h a t
enab les us t o r ecogn ize in an
un desi rab le o ld acqua in t ance t he
f o l l y t h a t w e h av e al r e ad y
e mb ra c e d . Am br ose B ierce
The next move is up to you, you now have the
information and hopefully enough insight to know that in
every circumstance, and in any situation, you determine itsfinal outcome. You can either give in or get going. The choice
is truly up to each of us. Sure you are going to fail, that’s life.
What you do with that failure, with that lesson, is up to you.
You have already paid for it?
We all have a circle of influence were connected too. We
motivate them and they motivate us, good or bad, both ways.
We have friends, relatives, co-workers, family, and especially
children we affect. In each of these groups you are looking up
to some of them. While some are looking up to you, if not all
of them. Whether we realize it or not, we all are leading or
following by example.
Motivating people is easiest when they are following an
example. You can rest assured that your group will only grow
as much as you do. It will not out grow you, which that you
can be assured of. One way or the other, you will see to that.
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Turning Your Greates Failures Into Your Greatest Victories 20
• Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.
Tobias Smollett
• By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by
reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is
easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius
We all have our mistakes to draw on and learn from.
Some of us will discover that we may at times shortcut the
learning curve by simply observing others. However for the
rest of us we will learn through trial and error.
Be that a blessing or a curse is up to us. We all have the
same gifts for discovery, and our experiences are the greatest
gifts we have ever given ourselves if used properly.
It does n ot matter if it is good o r bad
Do not fear making mistakes, but fear more the ability
each of us has to hide those mistakes from others, but more
importantly to hide them from ourselves. We are doomed to
repeat those things we have forgotten, unless we are strong
enough to face our failures as temporary points in our lives.
Points that everyone has had at some point or the other.
Our greatest lessons in life are not in books, or lectures.
Our greatest lessons in life are in our past, if we choose to
learn from it. Anyone can hide the truth and from it, but not
everyone can face it. The greatest leaders in history were not
the ones that lied to others or more importantly to
themselves. The greatest leaders were the ones that were willing to own up to their mistakes and confront their
decisions, learning from them and moving forward.
It is to those people that I look too for an example in life.
Humility and honesty, coupled with integrity and courage
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are the basis for a solid foundation of any human being. Lack
of those qualities breeds more of the same and so on.
The question to ask one’s self is this, am I meeting that
standard? The person I look up to, do they posses those
qualities? If not, you may be asking an electrician how to be a
carpenter!
Hindsight is 20/20
Perhaps the reflection of ourselves is the single most
important opportunity for growth we will have over the
course of our lives. When was the last time you took the time
to reflect? To learn from your past? One of my favorite
sayings, I have ever heard, is to do a check up from the neck
up.
How are we doing up there? Sometimes the hardestperson to change is ourselves. We can see things in others
but for some reason, maybe its pride, we over looks our own
shortcomings.
Maybe looking at our own shortcoming is too painful for
many of us. Yet that is where our true treasure is, it is where
we will find the answers to some of life’s most complexproblems. It is in those life’s lessons that we can save
ourselves and others a lot of frustration and pain.
By simply being brave enough to realize our limitations,
and to find out why we are limited in one area or the other.
Why did we fail in that area?
If I had it to do over again
How many times in our lives have we thought if I only
had it to do over again? While that would be nice if it were
possible in every circumstance, it unfortunately is not.
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Yet it is in more than enough circumstances, that if you
truly meant that, you could try again. If you are able to tap
into the failures you had the first time around, you would be
able to engage a different outcome the second time around.That is if you really wanted too. Imagine for a second our
carpenter, and him giving up the first couple times he cut the
boards the wrong size, or smashed his hands with the
hammer. He would have never been successful at carpentry.
Take for another example myself and learning to ride the
bike. I am now an accomplished rider, but not without cost. Idid not give up, although I wanted to, my dad kept me going.
He encouraged me to continue even after my failures and
falling down a dozen times. Even when I would fall and
bleed, he continued to believe in me enough knowing I could
do something I did not think I would ever figure out short of
dying or being maimed.
The same is true of all of us and others. We must have
that faith inside of us that we can do this. We must believe it
and be convinced of it. We must then pass it on to those we
have in our circle, that we believe in them, and continue
doing so through their failures.
We must have the conviction that they can do it, but we
must first have that conviction inside, within ourselves that
we can. You cannot give someone something that you do not
have, it is impossible. You must first own it to be able to give
it to anyone. If you do not know that you know, that what
you are doing is what you are supposed to be doing, then you
will never see the success you or the people following you
deserve. It very well could be called the blind leading the
blind. I was watching a movie once that said “failure is not an
option”. In the context of that movie, no it was not.
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Failure is however a very real option for the rest of us
here in the real world. Sometimes we choose to fail, whether
we do it on purpose or not. Sometimes we cannot help but
fail. We do not have the experience to do what it is we areattempting. Does that mean we do not do it? Sometimes it
does, and sometimes it means we have a lesson to be
learned. I like the scenario of the baseball player, should he
swing or let the ball go by? I guess it depends on the pitch,
and how much experience he has reading what’s coming at
him, huh?
One of the greatest homerun hitters in baseball once said
when someone asked him how he got so many homeruns. He
said I took a swing at everything! By the way he had more
strikes than anyone else to date too. Yet through those
strikes/failures, he also had the most homeruns! So I say
swing away.
Know this though…… … …… …
Our failures are not the biggest parts of our resumes in
life. They are simply pieces to the puzzle. A part of a much
bigger and grander plan. They are one ingredient in the
recipe that is our life!
You have to have all the ingredients or the recipe is
missing something. Whatever you are cooking will not come
out right without all the ingredients. Failures are one of life’s
ingredients, one shared and required by all.
Just remember you get to decide how much to add, and how to adjust all the ingredients in your life. The best way to do
that is to remember what works and what does not.
That is how you can turn your greatest failures into your
greatest successes.
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