Brice Royer

It’s true. I am a failure and I’m not afraid to admit it, because it’s the truth.

What does failure mean to you? What are some of your failures? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.

I failed a lot in life, at school, business, career, relationships… and the list goes on.

Let’s look at some of my failures, imperfections, and challenges:

Today I’m still alive and those doctors and teachers were wrong.

I cured myself of years of disability in 1 hour
6 months later, my business eventually became successful enough to support myself and my mom so she could quit her job.
I quit my job and saved all my money to move to a new city and take 1 year off work to start a non-profit organization.
I have amazing, compassionate, loving, purpose driven friends from all over the world
I’ve had mind blowing dating and relationship experiences.
I’ve experienced an incredibly amazing life and I proved everybody wrong.

Basically, I turned those challenges into strengths and opportunities. It was scary, but really worth it.

Don’t fail on purpose, but embrace the inevitability of failure and redefine it as a stepping stone to success.

Have you failed at anything in life too? If you have, then you and I are in good company.

The Ultimate List of “Failures”

“Would you like me to give you a formula for… success?
It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.”

-Thomas J. Watson, Founder of IBM.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost
300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning
shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my
life. And that is why I succeed…. I can accept failure, everyone
fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. “

- Michael Jordan

* Albert Einstein (age 10) “You will never amount to much,” schoolmaster.
* Ludwig van Beethoven. No talent for music … “as a composer he is hopeless,” music teacher.
* Thomas Edison. too stupid to learn anything, teacher.
* The Coca Cola Company. Sold only 400 bottles its first year in business.
* The Beatles (1962). “We don’t like their sound … guitar music is on the way out,”Meca Records.
* Jack Canfield and Mark Hanson. “Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories,” one of the 144 publishers that rejected the book proposal for “Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved.

—Lao Tzu

Richard Branson’s latest book Business Stripped Bare. This particular section from his chapter on Entrepreneurship & Leadership that must be shared:

To be a serious entrepreneur,you have to be prepared to step off the precipice. Yes, it’s dangerous. There can be times, having jumped, when you find yourself in free fall without a parachute…Then you reach out and grab a ledge with your fingertips — and claw your way back to safety.

Life has become too cosy for many, who have their lives mapped out by parents and teachers. It’s all a bit, well, comfortable: off you go to university to study a course. Land a good job, get a mortgage, find a nice girlfriend, boyfriend, partner. It’s a solid life — a good life in many ways — but when was the last time you took a risk?

Many people reading this book will be affluent. If you don’t feel affluent right now, take a minute and think: the very fact that you could afford this book — the very fact that you are able to read at all — marks you out as one of world history’s richest and most privileged people…Affluence makes us lazy. It makes us complacent. It smothers us in cotton wool. If you job’s well paid, who can blame you if you’re not willing to take a risk and, say, set up your own company?

The vast majority are very happy with this arrangement, and good for them. But if you want smashbuckling action in your life, become an entrepreneur and give it a go. Learn the art of trying to set up your own business.

People have a fear of failure, and while is this perfectly reasonable, it’s also very odd. Because it seems to me that it’s through making mistakes that we learn how to do things.

Now, I grant you that you may hit a limit, beyond which you can’t learn from your mistakes. Don’t expect a chart-topping album from me any time soon, or a recital at Carnegie Hall, or a sequence of sonnets, or any of the billion and one other things I’m never going to be great at. But that’s not failure. That’s finding out what you’re good at. The world is much, much bigger than you, and no amount of worldly success if going to change that fact.

Failure is not giving things a go in the first place. People who fail are those who don’t have a go and don’t make an effort. Failures can’t be bothered. There are few people who’ve tried something and fallen who didn’t get enormous satisfaction from trying, and I’ve learned more from people who have tried and faltered than from the few charmed people for whom success came easy.

The word “Failure” needs to be redefined.

FAILURE
Old Definition:
A negative, fatal, and final result indicating:
* An inability to perform and a lack of success.
* A falling short because of ineptness, deficiency, or negligence.
* A bad, bad thing that should be avoided, mourned, and punished.

New Definition of Failure

A short-term unexpected result that reflects a challenge in progress and that provides:

* A stepping stone to success.
* An opportunity for learning and development.
* An opportunity for creative change and innovation.

Learn From Failure

“ Once you embrace unpleasant news not as negative but as evidence of a need for change, you aren’t defeated by it. You’re learning from it.”

—Bill Gates

What about you? What are your thoughts on failure? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.