Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2010, and its description of Google as the most valuable company in the world reflects 2010. That claim was doubtful even then, as market-value rankings change constantly.
The fear of failure is the main reason we don’t achieve success, which is why we should treat failure as part of learning. There’s an old saying: if you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.
At my age, young or old depending on how you look at it, I already have one clear message: on the road toward anything you start, what matters isn’t how many times you fall, but the energy with which you get back up.
Failure will always be part of our lives: failure in love, failure in business, it doesn’t matter, the result is the same. You reset the counter to zero and start again. Success is a long road on which, as a proverb rightly says, “the winner isn’t the one who runs fastest, but the one who keeps running when everyone else has stopped.”
Here are a few motivational examples:
- The Beatles: No record label wanted to promote them, and some even had the nerve to tell them something along these lines: “We don’t like your music, and that guitar sound is already outdated. Nobody is going to like what you do.” I don’t need to tell you how successful those lads went on to be.
- Michael Jordan: He didn’t make the cut at his high school basketball tryouts; he wasn’t good enough. It’s said that he spent 2 months depressed until he heard that success depends on our mindset and that nobody can steal your dream. He tried two more times. I think basketball didn’t turn out too badly for him in the end.
- Thomas Edison: “He’s stupid and a poor student. With that attitude he’ll never amount to anything.” That’s what his parents were told at a school meeting when Thomas was 15. I believe he went on to invent a thing or two of some importance.
- Walt Disney: He was fired from a newspaper because he had no imagination or creative ideas. Fifteen days after being fired, he began the greatest fun and entertainment project for children in history.
- Google: “Search engines aren’t a business,” said the investors. “Only important companies are listed here,” said Wall Street. Nobody bought shares in what is now the most valuable company in the world.
There are people who aren’t afraid of failure, people who see goals to reach rather than obstacles on the road, positive people who see the glass as half full rather than half empty, people who know that failure is part of learning. Those people deserve success.
Further reading
Featured image: Levin C. Handy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
