The No.1 Secret to Success - Make Love With Failure

When you step into the Winning Mode, your outlook changes. Mistakes become stepping stones towards achieving your dreams and goals. People in the winning mode make a conscious effort to change their F-words. In order to succeed you have to change your F-words.

Failure must equal Feedback

Failure must equal Feedback and must be articulated in that way. You have to fail your way to most success. Harrison Ford was told he was never going to make it by the manager in charge of the new acting talent programme he was in. Later, he was rejected by George Lucas for the part of Hans Solo in Star Wars and only got that life changing role as he was willing to hang around to help other people try out for the part. Most would have just gone home.

Stephen King's first breakthrough book Carrie was rejected 30 times by publishers. He even threw it in the bin. It took his wife to pick it out, dust off the the cigarette butts and force him to keep trying. Good she did as the next publisher accepted what turned out to be Stephen's first big breakthrough novel. Norman Vincent Peale's wife did the same thing with The Power of Positive Thinking which lay in the rubbish bin as the champion of positive thinking had been overwhelmed by negative feedback. She rescued it and sent it to one more publisher. It has now sold over 20 million copies worldwide.

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Speaking of novelists – here are some figures collected by one website from a host of others regarding how many times famous books were rejected:

Auntie Mame, Patrick Dennis (15)

Carrie, Stephen Kng (30)

Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfeld and Mark Victor Hansen (140)

Diary of Anne Frank (16)

Dr. Seuss books (15)

Dubliners, James Joyce (22)

Dune, Frank Herbert (23)

Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (38)

Harry Potter book one, J. K. Rowling (9)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach (18)

Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl (20)

M*A*S*H, Richard Hooker (17)

The Peter Principle, Laurence Peter (16)

The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot (17)

Watership Down, Richard Adams (26)

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle, (26)

Michael Jordan -Twinned greatest player of all time depending on which side of the Bird/Jordan dispute you lie on said:

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And, that is why I succeed. ”  

Michael Jordan

Jordan succeeded because he failed. It was his ability to face up to the possibility of failure and keep trying again and again that allowed him to carve his skill further into an absolutely spellbinding craft which stunned the world and inspired millions to believe that a pair of trainers could make you into a superstar.

In order to succeed you have to bite the bullet, put aside your ego and keep banging away until it works. Ego prevents people from moving forward and exercising the discipline that will always make them great if applied intensively enough and for long enough.

The Past is a School NOT a Club

The key is to take a lesson from the mistake and move forward. Jim Rohn, an inspirational speaker to millions said 'the past is a school not a club'. The reason why people are so afraid of failure is that they are afraid of themselves. Once the failure becomes part of their history they worry that it will be a stain on who they are and what they are capable of. They worry that the failure will engulf them. The failure will hold a power over them and they will be stuck in that failure club for the rest of their life.

People in the Winning Mode treat the past as a school. They wear failures as badges and each badge reminds them of an important lesson in life. The badge is not who they are but what they have learnt from their experience. When the lesson is learnt the student graduates but the badge remains a qualification which puts that person one step ahead in their mission.

Sly Stallone – Case Study of an Obsession

Now, it's all very well to say that people should treat failure as success and use it to move on but the reality is that if a person is not in the Winning Mode then that position is completely illogical and untenable. Why would anyone naturally treat failure as a lesson, as feedback, as a stepping stone to success unless their mind is completely and utterly fixated and indoctrinated towards success. One has to be so convinced with the certainty of the successful outcome that logic bends towards the reality which is held in the winning mind. An extreme example of this was Sylvestor Stallone.

He was rejected as an actor by countless agents in New York. In fact everything about the Rocky story and the story behind the Rocky story shows the power of getting back up every time life knocks you down. In fact one of the best definitions I've ever heard of success is:

'Success is getting back up one more time than you got knocked down' Someone Wise

One of the most important points about the writing of Rocky is often missed when people tell this incredible story. Stallone went to see Muhammad Ali versus Chuck Webbner and the unrelenting pushing forward of Webbner despite all the odds and the beatings that Ali was giving him inspired Stallone.

‘It was one of those writing frenzies and three days later I came up with the script of Rocky. Now the script by no means was a finished product. It was probably about 90 pages and maybe 10% of it remained in the final script – but it was done.' Stallone

Often in order to try and dramatize the Rocky story further many people who retell this story ignore the fact that the script had been completely altered by the time it was translated into the final film. But by missing out this point about how Stallone had to customise his script, those telling miss the entire point of Rocky.

As Tony Robbins points out, the point of Rocky is that no matter how many times he gets knocks down, he gets back up again even better than before. Stallone's first critic was his wife at the time who said she didn't like the script. Some may have just chucked the 90 pages away at that stage but Stallone asked her what she didn't like and she said Rocky was too dark and mean a character. Sly converted his failure into feedback and developed the character further to become the Oscar winning Rocky we know today.

But the story wasn't over yet. When Stallone was on a casting call he was once again getting rejected for an acting position:

'on the way out I said I don't know if it matters but I do a little bit of writing and they said “oh really” and I said yeh I have this story about wrestlers and I might be doing something on boxing ...and they said, well, bring it around'

Stallone said that in retrospect everything hinged on that moment. If he hadn't, in the moment of defeat got back up with another shot at opportunity, his life would have been a whole different story.

However it is clear about this man that had he not got back up in that moment his nature was to keep trying and that this would have led him to some level of success whatever the weather. He had it in him to keep trying no matter what hits seemed to come his way.

Even when he was finally offered $25,000 for his script Sly turned it down because he was so focused on being the main actor while the directors wanted to cast established names James Caan, Robert Redford or Burt Reynolds for the part. To try and convince him to back away from his own script they then threw $100,000 at this broken failure who had $106 in the bank, his $40 car had just blown up and he had already sold his wife's jewellery and his best friend (Buttkus the dog who he finally bought back for 20 times the price – Buttkus even made it into the film!).

Stallone refused and insisted that he was Rocky. At $250,000 he says his head was 'spinning' but he knew even when it hit $330,000 that he had written this script as his dream role and his dream was always to be an actor. So even when they offered him $360,000, this was what ran through his mind:

'I know in the back of my mind if I sell this script and it does very very well, I'm going to jump off a building if I'm not in it.....I just believe in it.'

He took $25,000 and the starring role in the film which brought him many times $360k. We now have Rocky.

In order to succeed we must fail our way to success. In order to have the tenacity to see failure within the path of success we must KNOW that failure IS simply success deferred – it makes us who we need to be in order to succeed.

The 10 Million Dollar Lesson

The great CEO Tom Watsonmanaged to triple IBM's revenue within 6 years. No less than 5 IBM employees won Nobel prizes. Watson knew how to create a winning culture. When one of his vice president's cost the company $10 million on a failed development job the gulping VP walked into Tom's office with a hand written resignation. There was an awkward tension as he handed over the resignation across Watson's large oak desk. Watson laughed 'Are you serious? The last thing in the world I'd do is fire you – I just invested $10 million in your education!'

Always remember this. Even on the most basic of levels, the physical level, failure equals success. In a gym, the bodybuilder actually aims to keep going until his muscles fail. That tenth bicep curl which does not get completed and fails due to muscle exhaustion is the one which causes the muscle to build up bigger and stronger. Someone once asked Mohammed Ali how many press-ups he does. He replied that he doesn't start counting until it starts to hurt. It's when the muscle starts failing that success even begins. You must keep failing in life.

'The key to success is massive failure; Your goal is to out-fail your competition. Whoever can fail the most, the fastest and the biggest, wins.' Tom Watson, IBM's Greatest CEO

People often only really understand this on a superficial level. However the reason it works is two fold and brilliantly profound and simple at the same time. Let's say you are in sales trying to drum up new business. The more fails you are prepared to go for in a day the more likely you are to succeed on an incremental level of probabilities. This is the INCREMENTAL advantage of failure. This would be great if it were the only advantage. However there is also the GEOMETRIC advantage of failure. The more failures you are prepared to have the more honed your skill becomes through experience of what works and what doesn't. YOU become changed and YOU and your refined skill become the deciding factor which rockets your success.

Make Failure Your Daily Goal

I was once making sales calls to prospective clients. I was a little nervous, so based on some excellent advice from Darren Hardy, editor of Success Magazine, I told myself at the beginning that my aim was to get 50 fails that day. By doing this I curbed my fear of rejection and was able to focus on racking up the calls. My first few calls were really nasty. One guy was incredibly arrogant and mocked my attempts at attracting his business. However, because I had set my target I was not perturbed and persisted.

After eight calls I still had nothing. On call number nine I suddenly got some interest. After I put the phone down I asked myself 'what was different with that call?’ I realised I had asked the prospect a question which had led them into a very positive place regarding my product rather than launching straight into a list of the products benefits. The listing benefits approach had consistently led me to being told half way through to save my breath and time. The results of the new leading question approach were ASTOUNDING. My next ten calls produced an incredible 80% success rate!!!! By any sales standard that’s big but I never would have achieved it unless I had been prepared to experience failure time after time.

NOW. Let's revisit Larry Bird's quote from earlier 'A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.' .

The only way that you can graduate from talented to successful is to be prepared to exercise those talents until their failing point again and again and again. Too often the ego gets in the way of this and the people content themselves with having talent, untainted and unrealised. The only way to realise your talent is to develop it into a skill through challenging it beyond its capacities again and again and again until it grows beyond what you ever thought possible. That is why hard work beats talent every time. The hard in hard work is getting back up one more time than you've been knocked down. As I said this is the best definition of success that I know of so I will gladly repeat it.

'Success is getting back up just one more time than you've been knocked down'

Do this consistently and you don't need this book any more.

I learn more from you than you from me. How have moments of failure lead to success in your life? Take a few seconds to comment below, thanks!

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“This book will motivate and inspire you to set bigger goals, persist longer, and achieve more than you ever thought possible.” ~ Brian Tracy – Success Magazine's Top 25 Most Influential & International Bestselling Author, Million Dollar Habits