I'm enjoying reading John C. Maxwell's book Failing Forward. Failure is an almost universal fear. I say “almost” because the truly successful people in life have a very different view of failure. Maxwell points out that one of the greatest problems people have with failure is that they are too quick to judge isolated situations in their lives and label them as failures. Instead, they need to keep the bigger picture in mind. Whether you call what is happening in your life or what has happened in your life as a failure is up to you and you alone. You have the power to label your experience as failure or as a powerful learning experience – choose!
The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake.
– Nelson Boswell
Everyone falls down once in a while. Failure is when we don’t get back up
I read this book several years ago and it had a profound effect on the way I viewed failure. I realized that if I never failed then I wasn’t trying hard enough or testing the limits of my abilities.