Crippled CEO Blog #045:
If you’ve read my prior posts, you know that my dad served in Vietnam in the army. His father fought in World War II. In the World War II army field manual, they state that unless you are dead, all failure is psychological. As long as you are breathing, failure is only in your head. It’s mental.
That doesn’t mean that you’re going to immediately succeed at everything you do, that you’re not going to lose some battles. Because you will. You are going to screw up.
If you haven’t died, and if you don’t quit, you can still make a tactical retreat, regroup, reassess, and continue the path towards success.
If you are a starting actor who has never had a paid roll, and you get picked to be in a toothpaste commercial, you are going to be ecstatic. If you are Tom Cruise and the best work you can get is a toothpaste commercial, you might consider that a failure. The circumstances are identical. The failure is purely mental. It is entirely psychological.
If you haven’t decided to quit, then you have learned. You have gained experience. You are better now than you were before. Referring to his many attempts at inventing the lightbulb, Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Your ability to choose the story you tell yourself about your situation is tremendously powerful. You’re not a failure unless you decide you are. And I’ve decided that I’m not a failure until I’m dead. You can, too.
(Do you have a friend who has stumbled and might find this helpful? Please share it with him. And if you want to make sure you never miss the next one, send a text message with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848.)
Be First to Comment