“The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again.” – Solomon (Proverbs 24:16)
Two weeks ago, a young business acquaintance requested to see me to discuss what was going on with him. We eventually met to discuss the issue. In our meeting, he expressed disappointment with himself because of a business mistake he had made. As a result, he labeled himself a failure. During our meeting, I started by asking some questions to get an understanding of his background, and what his aspirations were before he made this business blunder.
My analysis of him during our conversation was a young and dynamic entrepreneur who had bold and audacious goals, and had made significant progress by taking the necessary courageous steps towards achievement of his goals. He was however, now blind to the achievements he had made and was now focused on this one mistake which seemed to cloud his better judgement. You may be able to relate with this scenario even if you are not an entrepreneur. You may be an employee and you may have made some major mistakes which now make you doubt your capabilities.
It was necessary that my friend acknowledged that he had failed in one of his plans, but that did not make him a business failure. When you examine the meaning of failure, It means to miss the mark, or fall short of an objective or plan you set for yourself. However, it is critical to note that a plan to do or achieve something is something you have never done before, and it was a guesstimate of what you could achieve in the first place. One of my mentors will always say – expect to fail! With this mindset, you realize that failure is not so bad after all.
One of the quotes I really like by the famous author and speaker Seth Godin, is “The only thing worse than starting something and failing.. is not starting something.” If you are doing something for the first time, the odds are you will not get the achieved results exactly as you planned it. One of the ways I have boldly stepped out to do things I have never done before is to expect that I will not get exactly what I set out to achieve. I may under or over achieve! The important thing is that I started that something.
Some learnings my young entrepreneur friend took away from our conversation included:
- Talk over your issue with someone you respect and value their opinions. By the time we had finished our conversation, he realized that the mistake was not as big as he initially thought. Somehow mistakes (or failures) have a way of magnifying itself to look much bigger than they appear to be.
- A review of why he made the mistake – They say hindsight is 20/20. He was able to objectively analyze why he had made the mistake. In his case, he did not seek expert counsel before embarking on the project, in trying to save some money. Now He knows better.
- There was an underlying fear of the future – because of the mistake he made and as a result, his cashflow was beginning to dry out. We were eventually able to come up with a plan of action on how to increase his marketing efforts. The fear of the unknown is real; however you can deal with it by critically thinking through the options available to you and coming up with a plan to keep you MOVING.
What is that something you need to restart after possibly failing previously?