Failure or Feedback?

We hear it all the time: “You must be willing to fail in order to win.” Sadly, most are not. They fear what others may think…which brings me to an incredibly important message…

I came across some very powerful information last week and am happy to share it with you this week. Short and sweet but very, very powerful.

Let’s dive in…

Most people are blinded by their goals. By their own internal measures, they judge themselves a success or a failure. But failure cannot happen to you — you do it to yourself. When you miss the mark, you can choose to call what you got feedback. You fail only when you give up believing in yourself. There is no other failure in the world.

A breakthrough strategy was developed at the Palo Alto Brief Therapy Clinic by Dr. Paul Watzlawick for lifelong learning that makes subsequent goal achievement surprisingly simple.

Pay close attention…

Although your actions may not always accomplish your goals, they always produce an outcome. If you know how to accept what your actions produce, you can use every outcome you produce to guide you toward your goal. “Whatever course of action you take,” says Dr. Watzlawick, “I am going to ask that you report any small concrete indicator of success, any movement in the direction of your goal.”

When you observe the effects of your actions, you open yourself to perceiving progress toward and away from your goals. Therefore, the only feedback is — “I have not arrived yet.”

The point of this strategy is to recognize movement. We experience success toward our goals without having to achieve them just yet. When we take the pressure off ourselves, we maintain our balance, enjoy the journey, and keep learning all the time.

Here is the ultimate lesson…

If you value and integrate the feedback from your actions, ALL outcomes you produce can lead to learning — NOT frustration like it does for those who do not know what you now do…

This may be one of the most important lessons I’ve seen in some time. I train literally hundreds of Entrepreneurs and Home Business Owners week in and week out in the Direct Sales and Marketing industry, and many of them are frustrated…

…frustrated for exactly the reasons mentioned here — they often view their actions as failures instead of feedback along the way to their destination.

Read this again and again. Print it out. Don’t take it lightly.

Views: 189