What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
Winners see losing a different way, as an opportunity to learn.
The saying goes that if an ocean liner had thoughts and feelings, it would never leave its dock. Those thoughts would paralyze us thinking about the waves we’d encounter. We need to become unstuck from those feelings.
There’s not much distance between the penthouse and the outhouse.
Life is full of loss, and losses can defeat us mentally.
Losses create a gap between “I should” and “I did.”
“Losses never leave us. One loss is good for the soul, too many losses is bad for the coach.” -Knute Rockne
We can’t let the fear of looking bad debilitate us. We can’t let the fear of negative consequences stop us from taking risks.
To limit the effects of losses:
- Let them go emotionally
- Learn from a loss
Aspects of learning:
- Humility – pride seeks close mindedness, humility is the spirit of learning. Know that some of the best inventions were done by accident i.e. Coca-Cola and penicillin.
- Reality. You can’t improve yourself if you don’t have a firm grasp on what’s true. Manage your expectations. Accept that life is hard. But don’t make life harder than it already is. People want to hold on to what they’ve got rather than change and grow.
- Responsibility – is not something that is given to us it’s something that we must take. We fail because we are entitled. We expect others to pave the way rather than taking responsibility for own actions. Choose what you want to do. Excuses will get you nowhere.
- Improvement – the focus of learning. Walter Cronkite said there are no shortcuts to perfection. Realize that failure is how you grow. Getting outside of your comfort zone is the best way to succeed and learn and improve. fight your own inner laziness and soar like an eagle, more often.
Hope
- Best summarized by baseball greats Jim Abbott and Tony Gwynn
Teachability
- People focus on clichés and habits rather than truly being students of life. Therefore their results take a step back.
- 85% of a successful attitude is hard work, not talent
- Teachable people have a beginners mindset.
Adversity
- We learn by making mistakes. That is how we grow.
- Businessess and profits are abound in times of recession or scarcity.
- The founding fathers were all entrepreneurs, but their biggest risk Innovation was the United States. Especially because it was at its most tumultuous.
- Splatters, are the people who fall and never get back up. Bouncers are those who fall and bounce right back up.
Problems
Bad experiences
Change
- Polaroid went bankrupt and went out of business because they resist a change. Early on in their development they were all about change. But that stopped in the 90s
- Lack of change becomes dogma and leads to death.
- Way to improve is to accept change.
- In order to get something you’ve never had you must do something you’ve never done.
Maturity
- Maturity is the wisdom and knowledge gained from having experienced failures and loss.
- Do something you don’t want to do, every day – Mark twain
- Dom Capers said maturity is doing what you have to do when you need to do it even when you don’t want to do it.
- Entrepreneur who successful fails an average of four times. Charles Schwab the investor billionaire, took out a second mortgage to pay payroll before becoming successful.
- The best way to allow your children to achieve is to give them the tools that will make them successful, not by reaffirming them or giving them full self-esteem.
- When you take risks you learn faster than those who don’t take risks especially if it’s in your strength but not in your comfort zone.
