Although the title talks about withstanding failure, the word we really want here is resilience. Definition of resilience: it is the capacity to face adversity, come out stronger and reach a state of professional and personal excellence. It gives a sense of control over events and a greater ability to take on challenges (Source: Wikipedia). And it applies to business as much as to your career.
In previous articles we talked about grit and the ability to bounce back from failure as skills for succeeding at whatever we set out to do (Read: 8 questions whose answers predict your success). That capacity, both for facing challenges and for recovering from failure, may be the most important part of success. It’s easy to say in theory, but how do you actually build that resilience in practice?
As in any game, we need to know the rules. First, we have to understand that success isn’t linear and that we’ll have ups and downs before we reach our goal. That’s why, although we should set ourselves small short-term objectives along the way, our final goal must be a long-term one. Remember that success isn’t a sprint but a long-distance race, or better yet, a series of races one after another.
That’s why we should look for something we’ll be able to stay passionate and persistent about. We have to accept that we’ll need to work very hard for long periods of time. Tenacity comes with experience.
(Read: 5 keys to excelling at whatever you set out to do)
Little by little, we’ll move up the levels
Clearing each level will be our greatest motivation, while failing to move up will be our hard lesson. Because you’ll need to stay open to learning constantly from every situation that comes your way.
Our emotional response to adversity
When we set out to achieve a dream, negative emotions such as sadness, anger, fear and stress tend to appear. And the truth is that, whatever people tell you, you can’t fight them. Everyone has some fear, and at any given moment any of us can feel a bit less cheerful (sad). So although we can balance those emotions with exercise, yoga or meditation (whatever works best for each of us), we’ll have to live with them, because nobody is free of them. But you should try to keep them in check.
That said, all great entrepreneurs agree that if you exercise every day, you’ll face obstacles with much more energy.
A philosophy of life that turns negative events into opportunities
Most people may be tired of this message. I don’t think anyone enjoys being told: “Look at getting fired as something positive, because now you’ll have new opportunities.”
True, nobody enjoys hearing it. But whether you take it with humor or with tears, the reality is that you’ve been fired, and if the situation is already rough, falling apart means you’re in trouble twice over. Being fired or failing is no party, but it is what it is, and there’s no going back.
It isn’t what you’d like it to be; it’s the reality of that moment. What I can tell you (even if it sounds like a cliché and repetitive) is that once you’ve lost almost everything, you shouldn’t be so afraid of trying something different.
I want you to remember Steve Jobs’s speech and his idea that, in the future, the dots connect and everything makes sense. Jobs and many other entrepreneurs even say that being fired was the best thing that could have happened to them, although they didn’t see it that way at the time.
Let’s choose to be realistic optimists
Success belongs neither to pessimists nor to idealistic optimists, but to realistic optimists, according to the study we covered.
Realistic optimists don’t ignore problems the way idealists do. Instead, they filter out irrelevant negative information to focus on the negative news that matters for their company or industry. While for the pessimist everything is a problem and for the idealist there are no problems, the optimist with a realistic outlook sees the problems and doesn’t try to dodge them, but faces them.
They know the road isn’t a bed of roses and they’re already counting on adversity.
(Read: Steps to reach your goals)
We’ll rely on the Seinfeld strategy
Performance and consistency in what we do was all the Seinfeld strategy needed to achieve success. It’s a way of contributing our daily dose of work (our brick), so that without even noticing, over time we’ll have built something big.
“We won’t focus on the finish line, but on the road. We won’t focus on reaching the long-term goal, but on the daily work.”
Further reading
- 40 universal truths for success in business
- 3 inspiring stories of how 3 great companies got started
Featured image: Denis Barthel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
