To be successful in life you’ve got to take risks, big risks. You’ve got to try things that might not work. You’ve got to chase dreams that might not be fulfilled.
The people who live the greatest lives are not the ones who never fail. They’re the people who learn from their failures, get back up, and try again.
Take a look at this video featuring the some of the greatest “failures” of all time.
My first attempt at starting OurChurch.Com failed. After a year, I was broke and had to get another job. While working that full time job, we changed business models, and essentially restarted the company. It took 2 1/2 long years of hard work before the business grew to the point where I could leave that job and do OurChurch.Com full-time again. We’re not Google or anything, but now we have 8 people on staff and serve more than 14,000 users and clients.
Not that I’ve got this one down or anything. I still struggle with the fear of failure and the temptation to play it safe on a regular basis.
But I want to encourage you…
Don’t let past failures keep you down!
Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from pursuing your dreams!
Do you have a story to tell from your own life of bouncing back from failure? What dream are you holding back on because you’ve been afraid it might fail?
I think this goes along with your message. Kids need to be allowed to experience failure, too. From today’s devotion by Parenting by Design: “Be careful with a successful child. We all need some failure to recognize our need for grace. Don’t let your child be carried away from God by his triumphs.”
Good insight, Mom. Not that you ever had opportunity to allow me to fail as a child. 😉 HA!
What Judy said.
Your Mom is a smart woman.
Allowing a child to fail is difficult. Most of the social pressure is on helping children succeed.
Wow. Absolutely fantastic. This message is one that many people across America and worldwide need to hear, myself included. As a parent, it is so true, yet so hard to watch when failure happens with our children. We want so much for our children to succeed and never know the heartbreak of failure. However, as the powerful message here shows – true success can be measured by how one reacts to, and as you said, bounces back from the failure. It is all in the lessons learned.
As for me personally, I don’t have some huge story of how I have bounced back from failure. In reality, I haven’t pursued many of my dreams to even give them the chance to fail. Sad stat of affairs I suppose! Is it the fear of failure? I don’t know. Is it being unsure of how to proceed and get started in that dream? That could be part. It all plays a part together, I’m sure.
Having said all that – thank you for writing. It touches more people in more ways than you realize.
Love the video, very encouraging. I often watch the movie ‘Meet the Robinsons,’ its a cartoon about a little boy who fails often. what I like about the movie is it changes our thinking about failure. The family celebrates when a family member fails because that is the only way you will learn. What if this is what we did with our children, that they don’t grow up fearing failure but appreciate what it teaches. I read a book by John Maxwell called Falling Forward which is a lot like this video, of all the people who made it but the failure that came prior to the success. I don’t know what happened to me as a child but I fear failure so much as a result. I have to remind myself often that it is okay. so I have read or seen a lot of things of how failure sets you up for success.
Thanks for your comment, Dionne! I’ll have to check out the cartoon. And while I’ve read a number of John Maxwell’s books I haven’t read Falling Forward. I’ll have to check that out as well.
LOL, sounds familiar. I don’t think it’s actually failure you’ve experienced though, but simply the promise that life would not be easy for us. Failure in my book is if you didn’t learn from the mistakes and never got back up. That would be the ultimate failure, failing to trust in God and get back up.