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Dr. Zimmerman's TUESDAY TIP:"It's okay to fail. It is not okay to give up."
Clare LaMeres, youth speaker
Dr. Alan Zimmerman's Comment:
Before you think I'm bragging, read on. I have a point to
make. I've
been a professional speaker for almost 30 years, and I've had a
great
deal of success as a speaker. I've earned the CSP (Certified
Speaking
Professional) designation from the National Speakers Association,
and
I've been inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame -- an honor
reserved
for a mere handful of people in the last 30 years ... including
Ronald
Reagan, Colin Powell, and Zig Ziglar. In fact there's only 6
people in
the world that have all 3 of my credentials --- the CSP, the
Speaker
Hall of Fame, and a Ph.D. degree.
BUT, I've also had my share of failure. Such was the case
with my first
paid speaking engagement at a major fortune 500 company back in
1979. I
was hired to conduct a two-day seminar ... at least that's what
I
thought. Two hours into the program, the boss of the group
called for a
break, pulled me aside, and said ... in effect ... that I was a
terrible
speaker ... offering none of the content he wanted. He
proceeded to
take over and teach the seminar for the next two days ... as he
relegated me to a seat in the back row. Talk about
humiliation and
failure.
I could have shut down my new, budding career as a professional
speaker.
I could have closed shop and gone back to a "safer" career.
But I was
lucky. I had a father who had taught me that even though I
might fail
at certain things in life, I was not a failure. I knew it was
okay to
fail, but it wasn't okay to give up.
And when you think about it, so much of the good in our world is
due to
people who did not give up. Just imagine what our world would
be
missing if Thomas Edison had given up after his first
unsuccessful
experiment in trying to make an electric light bulb. Imagine
how
landlocked we would be if Wilbur and Orville Wright had given up
after
their first failed attempt at flight. Imagine how backward we
would be
if Martin Luther King had given up after he was told his "dream"
was
impossible. And imagine the non-existence of the U.S. of A.
if George
Washington had given up. After all, he had every reason to
quit ...
because he lost every battle ... except the last one.
As Clare LaMeres says, "The fact is, every wonderful invention,
every
widely held positive belief turned into positive action is the
direct
result of someone who did not give up."
It's also a fact that you're going to fail once in a while ... no
matter
how hard you try not to fail. Everybody fails. Yes,
everybody. The
important thing is ... how you respond to your failure. I've
found that
the winners in life do several things.
=> 1. Winners see failure as normal.
Perhaps you remember the Michael Jordan commercial. You
see him
striding through the back hallways of the stadium where he was a
part of
the world champion Chicago Bulls basketball team. And then
you hear
Michael say, "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my life.
I've lost
over 300 games. Thirty-six times I've been trusted to take
the game
winning shot ... and missed. I have failed over and over
again in my
life. And that is why ... I SUCCEED!"
In essence, Michael was saying, "It's okay to fail. It's not
okay to
give up."
But I suspect Michael was also saying that failure is simply a part
of
the journey on your road to success. As psychologist and TV
personality
Dr. Joyce Brothers says, "The person interested in success has to
learn
to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of
getting
to the top."
=> 2. Winners see the positive value of failure.
In other words, winners learn from their failures, apply their
learnings, and get better ... the next time around. As
speaker Simon T.
Bailey says, "Failure is only feedback. And feedback is a
blessing."
By contrast, when losers fail, they just give up. They don't
realize
the wisdom shared by Pat Mitchell, the CEO of The Museum of
Television
and Radio. As Mitchell states, "My grandpa always used to say
that
falling on your face is the first step forward."
So please ... don't disparage failure. Handled right, it
could be your
surest ticket to success. As Samuel Smiles wrote, "It is a
mistake to
suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener
succeed
through failures. Precept, study, advice and example could
never have
taught them so well as failure has done."
=> 3. Winners throw away their failures as they keep
the lessons in
those failures.
Now that's a mouthful. What do I mean by that? And how
can you do it?
Simple. Get out a piece of paper and tear it in half.
And think of one
failure in your life. Perhaps you failed to get a promotion
at work, or
maybe you failed in a particular relationship. Write that
failure on
one of the half sheets of paper.
Now think about what you learned from that failure. You can
always
learn something from your failure. Maybe you learned to be
more visible
at work so you have a better chance at getting a future
promotion. Or
maybe you learned the need to control your temper so you don't blow
the
next relationship. Use your other half sheet of paper to
describe the
lesson you found in your failure.
One caution. When you write down a lesson, make sure you
write down a
positive lesson that has the potential for improving your
life. If, for
example, you failed to get a promotion, the lesson is NOT that you
are a
loser. There are no positive possibilities in such a
lesson. The
positive lesson may be that you need to get some additional
coaching so
you are more likely to be promoted.
Now take the paper on which you wrote down your failure.
Crumple into a
ball. And toss it into a trash basket. Just keep
throwing until it
goes in. In so doing, you are embedding the physical memory
of throwing
your failure away ... while keeping the lesson.
And that's great. The lesson you've kept is a gift.
It's something you
might not have learned if you had not experienced the failure.
Resolve, from this day forward, when you experience a failure, you
will
take time to discover the "lesson." It will always be
there. Don't
miss those lessons ... because they're critical.
Tom Watson, Sr., the founder of IBM affirmed that. When he
was asked
the quickest way to success, he said, "Double your failure
rate."
Oh yes. If you're wondering about the lesson I learned from
my first
failure in speaking, it was simply this ... to get a lot more
clarity
from a client BEFORE I deliver a program. I need to know
EXACTLY what
my client wants instead of guessing what he/she wants.
And the lesson paid off. That same client went on to hire me
for
another 100 programs in the following years.
Action:
Try the two half-sheet page method. Write down a failure on
one sheet.
Write the lesson on the other sheet. Toss away the
failure. And post
your lesson where you will see it.
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