Embracing Failure in Business

Business Partners' Disappointment in Failure Negotiation

1. The Symbol of Progress

Now in business, failure is synonymous with progress. It's an important benchmark that everyone hits before finding success. That's why many of the most successful companies in the world have adopted a positive outlook on failure. They see failure as a big step in the right direction, and they know that it's something to be proud of.

Before you can fail, you have to expand your horizons. You have to take new risks and push the envelope. If you're not failing, you're standing still; you're going nowhere. After finding a bit of success, many people avoid failure because they're scared of moving backwards. But even if you're moving in the wrong direction, you're still going somewhere. Standing still means you've stopped trying, and if that happens, you'll never learn or grow. You're not going to accomplish your ultimate goals.

Imagine you're a singer who got famous for your first big album. You might spend the rest of your career living as a one-hit wonder, worried that your second album won't be as good as the first. But even if it bombs, you'll still learn all kinds of new lessons from that failure. You'll develop as an artist and discover new ways to expand your style. Without the failure of your second album, you stand no chance of finding success with your third. You'll miss out on a chance to accomplish your lifelong dream. So don't be afraid to fail. Don't worry about moving backwards. Every slip-up will bring you one step closer to your goals.

2. Innovative Combinations

Sometimes two wrongs do make a right. Just imagine you started a new business, but it's not doing too well. People seem to like the product, but the marketing was a disaster. Eventually, your first business goes down the drain.

A few years later, you start your second company. You really focus on getting the word out there, but this time the product isn't very good. Your second business ends up failing even faster than the first. Now that's two colossal failures, but neither of these ventures was a waste of time. Both of your failed ideas still have the potential to be something great. You just need to blend them together. You'll launch a third company that uses the products from one and the marketing strategies from two. This time, your business takes off, but that success was only made possible by the combination of your failures.

3. Highlighting Weaknesses

There's a host of reasons why you might fail. You may take on a project you can't afford or tackle a theory you really don't understand. You might get bored and lazy halfway through, or maybe you just don't know where to go next. It's important to pay attention to the way you fail, especially if you keep failing for the same reasons.

Let's say you've wanted to write a book. You've started five different narratives, but each time you give up after the first chapter. So what's the problem? You might blame your concept and say you failed because your idea wasn't good enough. But a closer look shows us something else. You keep failing because you aren't sure what to do next. You never learned how to develop your narrative past the first chapter, so you're stuck inside your comfort zone.

This realization will completely change the way you practice. Without it, you'd keep writing intros over and over again. You'd waste even more of your time on something that isn't helping you to improve. But your failure shines a light on your weaknesses. It shows you exactly what's holding you back, and that way you can make real lasting changes to your habits and lifestyle.

4. First-Hand Wisdom

To learn the pitfalls of any road, you have to travel down it. There's only so much you can learn from a distance. You might have all the facts and figures memorized, but nothing compares to real first-hand experience.

Let's say you want to do something simple like hammering a nail into a piece of wood. You can read all about the different types of tools and learn the physics and do the math. But you'll never know what it feels like to swing that splintering hammer down with your own two hands. That's one reason why failure is such a powerful learning tool. Just because your company failed or your idea got rejected doesn't mean it wasn't a valuable experience.

You learn how to improve by confronting that negativity for yourself. You might have discovered new roadblocks that you didn't know existed or shortcuts that will help you the next time around. My point is that experiencing failure awards you an incredible amount of first-hand wisdom. So don't spend your life sitting on the sidelines. Before you can ever succeed, you need to get in there and fail for yourself.

5. Compulsory Creativity

Most people don't realize how much failure improves your creativity. It forces you to think outside the box because in order to succeed, you need to pioneer unique solutions to your problems. You can't settle for the most obvious resolution. You have to approach your goals in a way that no one else has before. You need to find a more creative path that guides you to the same destination.

Imagine you're trying to open a new restaurant. You've always loved those old-timey diners, so you want to decorate your restaurant in that same style. But there are already too many diners in the area, so your first restaurant bombs. It's always been your dream to own a diner, so you decide to try again.

You still want that old-timey feel, but you learned your lesson from last time. You know you need to do something to help you stand out from the crowd. So you take your regular old diner and put a creative spin on it, and suddenly business starts booming. Without experiencing failure, you would never have pushed yourself to be innovative. You wouldn't have challenged your creativity. Failure inspires you to broaden your thinking, develop your ideas, and refine your wildest dreams into more specific, attainable goals.

6. Solidifying Pride

The more you work on something, the more meaning it carries. Think about how easy it is to look up a picture of the Grand Canyon. With access to a computer or a smartphone, you can do it anytime. It would only take a few seconds, so obviously that picture isn't going to mean much to you.

But what if you had to work for it? What if you had to drive 12 hours across the desert, hike up to the highest ridge of the Grand Canyon, and take that picture yourself? It's exactly the same picture. The Grand Canyon hasn't changed, but the picture will have so much more value. You'll be especially proud of it because you worked so hard to get it.

In the same way, failure solidifies your pride in your work. If it were easy to accomplish your goals, they wouldn't be worth accomplishing. You wouldn't feel satisfied when you're done. But every time you fail, the payoff grows. You're investing so much time and effort that your success changes shape. It looms larger in your mind and carries more weight in your future. Each failure will make you more and more determined to achieve your goals.

7. Coping with Hardship

Experiencing failure doesn't just encourage success. It also teaches you to navigate rough situations, persevere through adversity, and cope with hardship. Do you remember the first time you overdid it at the gym? Maybe you ran longer on the treadmill than you ever had before, or you might have done a couple of extra sets of lunges. Either way, your body felt extremely sore the next day. You were so stiff that you could barely walk.

But after a few days of rest, you went back to the gym and did that grueling workout again. You put the exact same amount of stress on your body, but this time you weren't that sore. Your muscles didn't feel nearly as stiff as they did before. Failure works the same way. Each time you fail, you get better at handling the frustration and disappointment. Little by little, you tune out all that negativity so it doesn't affect your mindset or motivation in the future. Because you're not going to fail just once; you're going to fail over and over again. Luckily, experiencing failure will teach you how to fail the right way.

8. The Value of Experimentation

Once you become more acquainted with failure, you might start failing on purpose. Scientists are famous for their intimate relationship with failure, or as they like to call it, experimentation. When you run an experiment, you aren't really trying to succeed or fail because you can learn important things from both outcomes. In fact, a failed experiment can tell you just as much as a successful one.

The real purpose of an experiment is to expand your knowledge, to try something that hasn't been done before, or to confirm something you're confused about. Let's say you're testing what happens when you mix two liquids together. Whether it bubbles, explodes, or does absolutely nothing, your experiment still taught you something new. It doesn't matter whether you predicted the end results. You still know more than when you started, and that alone makes failure a valuable tool.

Conclusion

Embracing failure is essential for growth and success. By understanding its value, you can turn setbacks into stepping stones toward achieving your goals.

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