It is often said that death and taxes are the only two things that are certain in life, but it is fair to say that failure should be added into the mix. There is not a single person in the world who has the ability or the foresight to go through life without ever taking a single misstep. It is how a person reacts after failure that can determine whether they are viewed as a success or not. If you look at the careers of the most successful business people in the world today, you can bet that there will be a history of failure in their wake. The difference between those people and those who rest on their laurels is that they saw failure as an opportunity to advance their business.
The thing about failure, whether in business,trading or your personal life, is that is can be a magnificent learning tool. How else can you know how to proceed without having some sort of experience to build upon? Think of a child who has yet to learn about the impact of success and failure on their life. That child may have a tree in their yard that they would love to climb, yet they keep falling down with each attempt. Rather than continually taking the same route, they will find new hand and footholds to assist with their climb, ignoring the old routes in the process. Once they finally scale that tree, they will be a little bruised, but will feel a sense of accomplishment like no other.
It is only possible to learn from failure if you are truly objective about the reasons it happened in the first place. Many are quick to push the blame off on others, when in fact it was the mistakes that they alone made that led to the end. If you can hold yourself accountable, and really pinpoint where you went wrong, you will never make that same mistake again. In business, you can well be on the right road, only to have a single obstacle or unforeseen situation send you off on an ill-advised detour. Being aware of what those obstacles are will help you avoid them the next time they get in the way.
In order to do all of this, you have to accept that failure is indeed an option, no matter how much you don’t want it to be. The people that give up the first time they fail are generally the ones who never believed that it could happen to them. Success comes to those who innovate, which is something that cannot be done when you remain obstinate. We started off this piece by talking a little about a quote that is used on a daily basis. When talking about failure, the quote that fits best is, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In order to be a success in trading or in business you need to use past failures to toughen up and create a skin that cannot be penetrated by future failures.
So don’t be scared of failures, Embrace them, Love them and learn from them, because there is no greater feeling than coming out ahead.
