Would you rather be a success, or a failure?
That’s probably an easy question to answer, right?
What if I gave you a third choice? You can either be successful, unsuccessful, or a failure. Unsuccessful means you aren’t a huge success, but you’re also not a failure.
Or are you? Interesting question, more on that later.
Now, presented with those choices, which would you rather be, and which would you rather not be?
And before we go much further, you do have a choice about whether you’re one or the other, as we’ll discuss in this report.
Success or failure doesn’t just happen. It requires a person to perform some activity to reach the ultimate event.
Not so with “unsuccess”. Unsuccessful people can just sit around, waiting for success to happen.
Do the same job day after day. Come home. Eat dinner. Sit in front of the TV set. Go to bed.
Lather, rinse, repeat enough times and before you know it, you’re wondering what happened to your life.
Sad really. Really sad.
There is a difference between people who are successful and those who are unsuccessful.
But you’d be surprised at how small that difference is.
Successful people take action when they sense an opportunity, or as often happens opportunity comes to them. This bothers the heck out of the unsuccessful people. “Why does he/she get all the breaks? I’m just as smart!”
Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, procrastinate.
Successful people aren’t afraid to fail, knowing that failure produces feedback.
Zig Ziglar, one of my favorite motivational speakers, said it so well: “Failure is a detour, not a dead end street.”
When you’re driving down the street on the way to work or shop, if you see a detour sign, do you turn around and go back home? Or do you stop your car and wait for the detour to be removed so that you can continue?
No, of course not.
But unsuccessful people accept a detour as an end result, and all too often quit. In fact, unsuccessful people cringe at the thought of failure. They think people will laugh at them, they’ll be rejected or shunned, they’ll have wasted their time.
That’s a good one. They don’t want to waste their time doing something that might result in a positive outcome, afraid that it won’t, so they watch television instead.
Give me a good solid failure any day of the week so that I can move forward!
Successful people work a little bit harder sometimes. But not that much harder. In fact sometimes they work less hard (work smart, not hard). Actually the most successful people don’t consider what they do to be work at all, since they enjoy what they’re doing.
The thing that’s important is that successful people have a “why”. They know why they’re doing what they’re doing, whether it’s so they can escape a job they hate, so that they can enjoy a better standard of living for themselves and their families, so that they can have more free time for the important things in life, or so that they can make a difference in people’s lives.
They’re driven to succeed, they’re passionate, they’re resolute. Nothing can stop them. Sure, they’ll encounter the same detours everyone else gets, but they’ll accept them as part of the process, and keep on going.
Unsuccessful people say “Hey, I worked 8 hours today, I need to relax”, while soon-to-be successful people will say: “I worked 8 hours today, I don’t want to do this the rest of my life, so I’ll work on my personal project now”, and have a huge smile on their faces.
Successful people work on improving themselves as much as they work on improving their businesses, because they know that the more skills they possess, the more leverage they have, and the quicker they’ll be able to taste their success.
Unsuccessful people finished their education when they graduated from high school or college.
Successful people manage their time well. They know that every minute of every day is precious. They know that they get exactly the same number of daily minutes as everyone else, including the President, CEO’s of the world’s largest companies, and the homeless living in the streets.
They know that wasted time is something that can never be recovered, so they use tools that make them super productive, super focused, super organized.
Unsuccessful people look around at the end of the day and say “is it time for bed already?”
To summarize…
Successful people take action, accept occasional failure, work a little harder, have a “why”, manage their time well, and are constantly looking for ways to improve themselves and their skills.
So let me ask you…
If you had 100% confidence that those traits could make you a success in life, rather than an “unsuccess” or a failure, would you do them?
Myself, I’d rather be a failure than unsuccessful. How about you?
I know if I fail at something, it’s because I tried something. I reached that detour. I got feedback if only “Hey that didn’t work”.
Thomas Edison was a failure 10,000 times before his ultimate success. He had a lot of detours. He’s famous for his eventual success, not because of the other 10,000 events. Thomas Edison had a “why”. And his invention made life much better for the entire planet.
Here’s another quote I like from Zig: “Failure is an event, not a person.”
Let me say that again in another way, because that is so important that it could change your life:
If you fail at something, YOU are not a failure. It’s just the steps that you took didn’t quite work out well. That time.
Next time a slightly different sequence of steps might work. YOU still have a tremendous opportunity to succeed.
In fact your chances are better now, because you just identified one series of steps that didn’t work, and you learned from them.
Burn it into your core beliefs. Failure is an event, not a person. In fact if you teach that to your children, that simple teaching could improve their self esteem so much that it could change the world.
Failure is not a person.
Are you so afraid to fail because you think you’ll be laughed at, rejected, scorned, and embarrass your family until the end of time?
Did Edison want his tombstone to say “Here lies Thomas Edison, he tried to invent the light bulb, but after 16 tries, he gave up. But hey, that’s 16 times more than anyone else tried.” Or did he prefer it to say “Here’s lies Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb.”
Relax, even if the video of your failure ends up on YouTube, as long as you dust yourself off and persevere, you’ll be respected more than the unsuccessful person that sits at home and watches TV 7 nights a week.
I like to say “Failure is your friend”. Goodness knows I’ve failed more than I’ve succeeded, but the bottom line is what counts.
A single success can change your life, even define your reason for existence. I like to think that every human being is put on earth to make things better for the rest of the planet. We’re not put here to sit and drink beer while we watch TV.
A thousand failures, ten thousand failures, a hundred thousand failures, cannot prevent you from reaching that one success.
Only you can prevent you from reaching that success.
Another of my favorite sayings is “Money loves speed”.
What that means is that financial success is attracted to people who are decisive, who take action quickly. Do you or do you not want to be quick to act, and let money come to you?
Breakthroughs are often serendipitous events. You never know when they’re going to happen to you, but one thing I can pretty much guarantee you …
They’re going to happen to people who are out there taking action.
Finally a majority of the population believes that successful people paid a huge price for their success, a price that the unsuccessful people don’t want to pay themselves.
In reality, and again to quote Zig: “You don’t PAY the price for success, you ENJOY the price of success.”
The short term price of that success may be temporary failure, long hours, frustration, and criticism, but the bottom line is that you can end up with a much better life for the rest of your days, maybe even improve our planet, or at least have a positive effect on someone else.
Think about it another way. If you pay the price for a new car, you enjoy the ride for years to come. So too with the price you pay for success.
Hey, do you want to be successful or not? Do you have a burning desire? Do you know your “why”?
Answer those questions, and get out there and do it! I know you can. All you have to do is make a few minor tweaks to how you go about your day.
Now make today a spectacular day. I’m rooting for you.
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