To achieve the highest success, you have to embrace the prospect of failure. Whether you are a renowned business owner, executive, politician, father, mother, writer, priest or pastor, I assure you no one is without mistakes, and I am 100% sure they have failed countless times before. Like you, they are human, failure is part of the journey you’re on, and no matter how much you would like to avoid it, you cannot. Instead, you must learn how to handle it better and to become comfortable with it.
When James Quincey became the CEO of Coca-Cola, he called upon the rank-and-file managers to get beyond the fear of failure that had dogged the company since the “New Coke” fiasco of so many years ago. Quincey said, “If we’re not making mistakes we’re not trying hard enough.”
According to Pauline Estrem when we take a closer look at the great thinkers throughout history, a willingness to take on failure isn’t a new or extraordinary thought at all. From the likes of Augustine, Darwin, and Freud to the business mavericks and sports legends of today, failure is as powerful a tool as any in reaching great success.
“Failure and defeat are life’s greatest teachers [but] sadly, most people, and particularly conservative corporate cultures, don’t want to go there,” says Ralph Heath, managing partner of Synergy Leadership Group and author of Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big.
“Instead they choose to play it safe, to fly under the radar, repeating the same safe choices over and over again. They operate under the belief that if they make no waves, they attract no attention; no one will yell at them for failing because they never attempt anything great at which they could fail (or succeed).”
Some people get paralyzed by failure, and they believe if they fail at something that's it, my life is over. The sweetest victory is the one that’s most difficult. The one that requires you to reach down deep inside, to fight with everything you’ve got, to be willing to leave everything out there on the battlefield—without knowing, until that do-or-die moment.
Early on in Denzel Washington career for example, he auditioned for a part in a Broadway musical. A perfect role for him, he thought, except for the fact that, Denzel didn’t get the job. But here’s the thing about the story. He didn’t quit; he didn’t fall back. Denzel Washington walked out of there to prepare for the next audition, and the next audition, and the next audition. He prayed and prayed, but continued to fail, and fail, and fail but it didn’t matter because you know what? There’s an old saying according to Dezil Washington “if you hang around a barbershop long enough, sooner or later you will get a haircut. You will catch a break.”
Fail early, fail often, fail forward.
Last year Denzil Washington starred in a play called Fences on Broadway, and he won a Tony Award but here’s the kicker, it was at that Court Theater, the same theater where Denzil failed that first audition thirty years prior. Do you have guts to fail; if you don’t fail, you’re living your life so cautiously you are not even trying.
To achieve your personal best, to reach unparalleled heights, to make the impossible possible, you can’t fear failure, you must think big, and you have to push yourself. Many of us avoid the prospect of failure. In fact, we’re so focused on not failing that we don’t aim for success, settling instead for a life of mediocrity.
If you want to be great and experience the heights of success like the greats in leadership, you must get comfortable with failure.