Reposted from Tim Richardson

The Lessons Waiting on the Other Side of Failure

Five years ago this week, I face-planted during an early morning bike ride. To add insult to injury, the cyclist riding behind me ran over my neck while I was still on the pavement.

It was not my first cycling accident, and it likely will not be my last.

It was an epic cycling failure.

Failure is a necessary part of life. Looking back on that day, I realized that if I had done a few things differently, I might have avoided the accident. The same can be true in our professional lives.

We are going to fall. We are going to fail.

I failed repeatedly in my first job with IBM and was almost fired.

I failed in the training field when I first began speaking for a public seminar company.

I have failed more times than I can count in my current work as a professional speaker.

I failed over and over again in multiple ways.

Failure is part of growing.

Though in the moments following failure, it can be difficult to see any value in a mistake, a missed opportunity, or an unpleasant outcome. But evaluating what happened is an important part of growth.

The list of leaders and entrepreneurs who experienced failure before finding greater success is long.

Walt Disney’s first animation business, Laugh-O-Gram, collapsed and went bankrupt in 1923.

Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, the company he helped create, before returning years later to lead one of the most remarkable turnarounds in business history.

Abraham Lincoln experienced a number of political losses before being elected president.

Oprah Winfrey was removed from an early news-anchor role before finding success in a format that better suited her strengths.

Henry Ford’s early automobile ventures struggled before he built Ford Motor CompanyMotor Company. Bill Gates’ first company, Traf-O-Data, did not succeed.

Sara Blakely’s idea for Spanx was initially dismissed by manufacturers before she found someone willing to take a chance on it.

Failure can be good when we use it to propel us forward.

Failure is not always the opposite of success. Often, it is the tuition we pay for better judgment.

Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple forced reinvention. Walt Disney’s bankruptcy became the beginning of a new creative chapter later resulting in The Walt Disney Company . The question is not whether we will fail. The question is whether we will pause long enough to learn what the failure is trying to teach us.

We should not romanticize failure. Failure becomes a stepping stone only when we do three things:

Own the result without blame-shifting

Extract the lesson: What assumption, behavior, process, or decision needs to change?

Change something concrete before trying again

The next time you fall short, make the mistake, lose the opportunity, or face an outcome you did not want, pause before you move on.

Ask yourself: What can this teach me that success never could?

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