Turning failure into a stepping stone to success

You see, Ryan reminds us that “everyone fails in life, but it is a gift if we do not give up and are willing to learn, improve and grow because of it”.

In a world where most people are obsessed with chasing success so they can have content to share, I am also learning from another book by Ryan Holiday that in life we can turn our adversities into advantages when we always remember that The Obstacle is the Way. 

In this book, Holiday cautions us that when we are open minded, we will soon discover that the failures we meet along the way to our destinations of success offer us opportunities to practise virtues of life like patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, justice, and creativity.

On the other hand, Ryan Leak promises that when we embrace failure, we can live a life where we are able to pursue our dreams and live a purposeful life. 

He reasons that when we make the decision to chase failure and refuse our fears to hold us back from taking calculated risks, we will in the end have double success because of who we become in the process and the results we will eventually achieve.

Recently as we attended the Maxwell International Conference, the CEO, Mark Cole, reminded us of the success cycle. It always starts with us testing the product, next we fail and if we are open we learn from the failure, improve and re-enter the market again. 

It is only when we go through this cycle sometimes more than once that we end up with what we desired in the first place. It is for this reason that one can argue that indeed failure is a stepping stone to success. 

Failure was never meant to be final nor is it fatal. Instead, we ought to view it as a teacher showing us what we ought to do, or not do, or as a detour showing us that there is even a better way than what we envisioned in the first place. 

I like how Ryan Leak puts it: “When you see failure as a blessing instead of a curse, you will turn the gift of failure into a stepping stone that leads to the gift of success.” 

He goes on to note that when we fail, we should know that we are joining a club of the most successful people in the world. 

This is because, “when we chase failure, with the goal of growing and striving for making our wildest dreams even an inkling more of a reality, then we are living a life that is not only successful but inspirational”.

In the week’s that follow, we will look at how we can embrace failure by not allowing it to be a stop sign for us to continue with our dreams. 

To enable us reframe our views on failure, we will dive into how we can turn it into a learning plate form that provides us with lessons and valuable feedback to motivate us and give us the opportunity to course correct and continue the journey to success.

The work for us to do this week is to consider the areas where we believe we may have failed and then research on how many people have failed in these areas before us. 

I guarantee that when we do this, we will discover that all successful people fail first and fast and this will motivate us to get back in the game and try again.

Ms Rosette Wamambe is a transformational leadership coach with the Maxwell Certified Leadership Team    [email protected]