If you could not fail, what would you attempt?
Take a few minutes and jot down a few things you WOULD do (not COULD do, but WOULD do) if your success was guaranteed.
How many of them did you come up with? Two? Three? Four? More?
Would you call on your competitors' biggest customers in an attempt to woo them away?
Would you meet with the customers who eat up a disproportionate amount of your time and tell them they must increase their volumes of business with you or you won't be able to give them the amount of attention you have been providing?
Would you schedule appointments with your top ten customers for the express purpose of identifying prospects to whom they can refer you?
If you take away the option to fail, there's hardly anything you wouldn't attempt.
Completely removing the possibility of failure, however, is not possible. Failure is a natural part of the human experience. Everyone will "fail" at something - perhaps many things - during their lifetime.
Unfortunately, fearing failure - making the wrong choice or taking the wrong action - holds many people back from taking any action at all, a strategy that creates double negative outcomes. The first and most obvious negative outcome is missing the opportunity to succeed. The second negative outcome is missing the opportunity to learn from a "failed" attempt - obtain the valuable knowledge that is often revealed from attempts that don't create the desired result. It is often the lessons learned from our failures that allow us to go on and accomplish great things.
The real challenge in life is not to make the correct decision and take the correct action all the time. The real challenge is to just make a decision and take action... and accept and learn from the result. David Sandler once said, "There is no status quo." He explained that you are either taking action and gaining ground, or you're standing still - perhaps, waiting for something to happen - and losing ground to those who are taking action and succeeding.
- Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
