Why You Will Never Fail Again — NEVER!
When you fail, just know you are in good company. No one can sustain success without plenty of unwanted outcomes along the way. In fact, the titans in any field who sustain exceptional performance are serial failures.
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“Failure doesn’t exist. It’s a figment of your imagination.” — Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bryant is such an original thinker, he even had his own brand of thinking called “Mamba Mentality. But what in the world was he thinking in proclaiming failure doesn’t exist? Once you understand Bryant’s perspective, you will never fail again.
Our everyday language is filled with occasions to fail. Business failure. Failed marriage. Failing grades in school. Failing to make the team. Failing to meet a deadline.
Here’s the dictionary definition of “failure”– lack of success in doing or achieving something. The list of synonyms includes defeat, breakdown, loss, downfall, flop, and collapse. If that bleak tone is not sufficient, we tie failure into our self-esteem by labelling ourselves a failure. No wonder we dread taking on risks of failure.
When Kobe Bryant proclaims failure doesn’t exist, he offers a superb explanation:
“If I fail today, I’m going to learn from it on Monday and try again on Tuesday.”
“When we are saying this cannot be accomplished, this cannot be done, then we are short-changing ourselves. My brain—it cannot process failure. It will not process failure.” (“Kobe Bryant–Failure Doesn’t Exist” YouTube Video)
When you follow Kobe’s wisdom and choose to reframe the common meaning of “failure,” you will never experience failure. NEVER!
Reframing “Failure” in the Dictionary of Empowerment
Imagine we’re writing a new “Dictionary of Empowerment.” Instead of offering the common usage of words, this new dictionary contains synonyms associated with an empowering definition of words of like “failure:”
- Unwanted outcome
- Learning opportunity
- Course correction
- Continuous improvement
- Teachable moment
- Test of resilience
By reframing the meaning of failure, the emotional connotations go from dismal to inspiring. The only way to fail is to forfeit these wonderful opportunities.
The most powerful learning comes from failure because we’re forced to think more creatively and face difficult truths we’ve been avoiding. While success often comes from tweaking a winning formula, failure is the best source of insights to trigger breakthroughs.
In closing, you will never fail again once you reframe the meaning of failure from the rest of society.
Ruthlessly Honest Question
What events/results in your life have you defined as failures? For each of these so-called “failures,” what benefits/learnings/improved resilience did you derive over time?
Heroic Experiment for This Week
1. What is one of your recent attempts to achieve an important goal that you’ve labelled as a failure?
2. How will you reframe this supposed failure as an empowering opportunity for learning, creativity, continuous improvement, etc.?
3. What are the valuable learning from this unwanted outcome that you will apply in your future pursuit of heartfelt goals? (You might even reignite your pursuit of this goal you’ve essentially given up on).
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