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Double your failure rate
By Felix | February 18, 2008
“To double your success rate, double your failure rate.” — Tom Watson, Sr., founder of IBM
When I first read this quote, its didn’t make much meaning to me until I read it over again , so I’d like you to read it again and this time think about it…
Chances are you’ve read about all of the following failures who ended up making a great impact in their chosen field of endeavor. The key difference between them and hundreds of others who never made it to lime light is simple, ‘ They took each slap of failure with enthusiasm’.
Examples are… as a young man Abraham Lincoln went to war as a captain and returned as a private. Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4-years-old and didn’t read until he was 7. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her television reporter’s job and advised: “You’re not fit for TV.” Elvis Presley was banished from the Grand Ole Opry after one performance and told: “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son.”
Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded; Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Babe Ruth is famous for his past home-run record, but for decades he also held the record for strikeouts. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas. After his first audition, Sidney Poitier was told by the casting director, “Why don’t you stop wasting people’s time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?”
I could go on with this list and you would be shocked at the names you will see here, but the funny thing is some of these people we look at like small gods or very extraordinary all started out like you and me… ordinary, this difference between them and us today is they added a little extra to the ordinary and became huge successes.
Who says you can’t be the best in your field or area of endeavor, who says you can’t add the extra and become extra ordinary, who says there is no more space up there for you to also fly, why do you think you are too small or too ordinary to be read about in the papers or to be a key decision maker in your field of endeavor or your nation… my answer is look in a mirror.
I have taken time to hold a meeting with Me, Myself and I and the outcome is… If I am going to continue growing and developing, I have got to embrace the idea of trying something and failing. That will take me much further than doing nothing and succeeding. Life doesn’t come with any guarantees. Nothing is certain. There is no such thing as a sure thing. By taking few chances and not trying something new I will reduce my risk of failure. I will also reduce my chances of success. The British writer, Katherine Mansfield, implores us, “Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself.”
Nearly every human wrestles with failure. Some failures are minor setbacks that sidetrack us for awhile. Others knock us off our chosen path and leave us reeling from the impact, questioning our capabilities and our worth.
I agree that failure comes from many sources: Ourselves, others letting us down, major disappointments, even poor health, but for how long are we going to be licking those wounds?
So it’s time we get our butts up and stop complaining of how much we have tried in the past and it didn’t work and summoned the strength to keep going. Perhaps continue to travel our original path or travel another road, but which ever we choose, we must keep moving ahead stepping into a new phase of discovery and growth.
Success is… “Moving from one level of failure to another with enthusiasmâ€
Peace n a fist!
Topics: Failure, choice, fear, motivation, success principles |
February 18th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
The willingness to take risks is our grasp of faith as well as a test of our will power.”
Everyday of our lives is a risk.Imagine a world without risks,pple would die ealier than anticipated b’cos challenges won’t be met and “It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks,that will make the whole world one boring dump!
February 18th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
sometime the player gets played….lol.
February 18th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I am a firm believer that… what happens in ones life was to happen or it wouldnt have happened.. what we do or how we handle what happens results in the outcome who we ultimatly become. Successfull individuals are so because they never gave up.. and the measure of success is not nessessarily what others would have chosen. Perhaps others may look at my life and say “she could have done much better” JUDGERS i say, I on the other hand feel i am truly the most blessed woman on earth.. not because of material wealth, simply because i know the true meaning of life and know the difference.. I measure my success by the daughter i raised, the kind, caring soul, the emotionally intelligent daughter i have raised. It takes all kinds to create a world and how truly wonderful that is, what a boring world, if we were all the same. hagd all xxx
February 18th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.Try again. Fail again. Fail better towards success.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
nice one, we must keep at what we are doing and be optimistic. We will eventually be lucky, where luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Felix,
I really don’t believe in luck.
When I was in school, I ran a computer business center initially in my room with 1 PC and no printer. The business experienced a lot of ups and downs and I was moved to close it down for good. There was a day, when my Monitor just refused to come on, customers missed the deadline on their assignments and they were not particularly happy with me and to crown it up I missed a test while I was trying to remedy things all to no avail. But as at the time I was leaving school, I had a shop with 2PCs, 2 printers, 1 generator. I was the only system engineer that a lot of business centres around knew and so i received call regularly from people I don’t know to come fix something.
Today, you would want to say I’m a technical person. or you would want to say I’m good with using the PC. I studied economics in school but I dared to follow a part loved and for me failure was not final, my failure were opportunies for me to learn.
I am working on or around PCs today and people say I’m good and that i was lucky or that i used jazz or that i was born a genius, but i smile and say to myself they did not see me, when i will open my shop at 5.30am and by 10am i will be carry my monitor for repairs. They need not see me carrying a complete desktop from on street to another in search of NEPA light. They were not there when my system got burnt by high voltage from my generator and i had to begin from scratch.
I am living proof that failing 99 times only makes you know 99 ways it will not work if you are the type who looks to the bright side of things.
My advice to all, If you must fall, fall forward; that way it will be easier to get up and move on. Never let you back touch the ground until you are dead.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:35 am
peace and two fists
March 14th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
this is a great write up.i will be using it for speaking engagement coming up next week.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:11 pm
This is the timeliest piece of information I have gotten. Thank you very much for giving people a forum to display the truth of the statement, “to double your success rate, double your failure rate”. I am working towards that success.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
@yemi… i am glad it made a difference especially since you read it at the beginning of the year.
@all… will be updating the blog soon…. happy new year!