Routine failing

“Failure and defeat are life’s greatest teachers [but] sadly, most people, and particularly conservative corporate cultures, don’t want to go there...Instead they choose to play it safe, to fly below the radar, repeating the same safe choices over and over again. They operate under the belief that if they make no waves, they attract no attention; no one will yell at them for failing because they generally never attempt anything great at which they could possibly fail (or succeed).” 

 - Ralph Heath

• JK Rowling. One of the most powerful modern writers whose net worth hovers around $1 billion was once living on welfare.
• Walt Disney. Before the Disney empire was built, he was fired as a writer for lacking imagination and good ideas.
• Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV job as a news anchor for being too emotionally invested in the stories she covered.

• Steven Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts multiple times. Today, the profit of his movies exceeds $9 billion.

• Lady GaGa, with 6 Grammy awards and entry to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, was dropped as a young artist after 3 months with record label Island Def Jam. 

• Stephen King's failure and rejection as a writer persisted well into his adult years, before striking gold with his story, Carrie.

• Failure Strengthens You. Failure can tear you down but it also builds you to be a stronger person.
• Failure Gives You a Sense of Direction. You get a sense of clarity on everywhere you have gone wrong and how to take a better path to reach where you want to be.
• Failure Teaches You to Value all the right things in order to succeed.
• Failure Gets Rid Of Fear. Once you are accustomed to failing you have nothing left to fear anymore.
• Failure is an Opportunity. It shows us everywhere we might have gone wrong and gives us the opportunity to correct it.
• Failure is an Experience and could give us a deeper understanding of life and alter the way we look at everything that happens around us.

Failure feels like an indication of who we are as a person. Failing a test means you’re not smart enough. Failing to get fit means you’re undesirable. Failing in business means you don’t have what it takes. And so on.

• Put aside your feelings so that you can concentrate only on the other person’s perspective.
• Use open ended questions that can help you draw out the interests and motivation that the person may not be verbalizing.
• Be clear about your own position and the weaknesses it has.
• Remove any personal intentions you may have, so as not to project them on to the other person.
• Using what you know about the person, their background, their mood, their intentions and expectations,  imagine how they are seeing the current situation.
• Validate their position by paraphrasing back to them what you think their position is.

When you break it down, almost every aspect of business involves an element of negotiation. 

By honing your perspective taking skills, you are much more likely to come up with solutions that are acceptable to all parties.

"One does not need to be an egotistical maniac to be successful. 

This is one of the most misleading and destructive myths in all of Western culture."

It starts where our notion of ourselves and the world grows so strong that it begins to distort the reality which surrounds us. 

The ego has then succeeded in completely separating us from the world.

This mistake has a lot of implications on all the other areas of your life. 

Take the time to build healthy habits. If you’re running on empty calories and coffee, you’re not going to make the best decisions for your future.

Choose to step outside of it, because you are not going to reach your goals if you are not walking out in the unknown.

Find the courage to look foolish, encounter awkward situations, or find unexpectedly challenging circumstances waiting.

The best way to talk to strangers is to ask for their opinion on a matter. People love expressing their views. We can then focus our attention on what they say and use it to discover further what they think.

Asking open-ended questions is the key to developing this type of communication.

The more challenging we find it to talk to strangers, the more we will grow in that area when we take action, and the easier it will become.

When we challenge ourselves and move out of our comfort zone, we experience personal growth.

Being able to achieve a success metric is hard, but knowing which metric to achieve is even more important. Discover what you value and choose your own metrics for success, otherwise, your environment will dictate it for you, which could be unfulfilling for you.

Work towards your own idea of success and don’t let “FOMO” make you feel like a failure because you’re not meeting someone else’s metrics for success.