Most of us have been conditioned to believe that failure is our enemy, and it should be avoided it all costs.
As musicians (and as entrepreneurs), we have to do away with this notion. It simply isn’t true.
Failure serves a purpose. It is typically experienced more by those who are really driving towards their dreams.
The reality of failure must be acknowledged, but it shouldn’t be amplified.
Failure is Practically Inevitable
One of the realities we have to accept is that if you are in earnest pursuit of a dream, you can’t avoid failure. Period.
Simultaneously, you tend not to fear failure as much when you are passionately fighting for your future. When you’ve made a true no-matter-what type of commitment to yourself, you will follow through regardless of the challenges ahead and what it will mean for you.
We tend to exaggerate the consequences of failure and underestimate our ability to get back up and keep going after we take a hit.
You have to learn to make friends with failure because it is your companion on the way towards success.
Failure is Beneficial
We all make mistakes, no matter how experienced or knowledgeable we become. However, mistakes have a way of teaching us things we wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
After selling my house in 2012, I paid off all of my debt. I was able to bless my mom with a significant amount of money as well.
I thought I had learned my lesson, which was don’t spend money you don’t have.
Then, earlier this year, I found myself in a similar situation. Debt was piling up, and credit cards were starting to become a problem again. That’s when I learned that I had to add a stipulation to the lesson I thought I had learned: don’t spend money you don’t have, even if you are investing into your business.
Don’t get me wrong; walking out this journey hasn’t always been easy. I’m still working my way out of the hole. However, the real failure here would be to blame someone else for the problem and not take responsibility for it. The real failure would be to go through this experience without reflecting on it or learning anything from it.
Moreover, it is possible to learn from the mistakes of others. If you can bypass the challenges others have gone through by learning from them, that is ideal.
Success is Merely a Series of Failures
The more you fail, the closer you are to success. The fact that you are failing more means you are willing to go through criticism, ridicule and challenge to get to where you want to go.
We tend to look upon success as a final event, when in reality it is much closer to a process. That process requires you to grow, change and learn. You probably won’t achieve what you want to without becoming a different person along the way.
If you risk nothing, you gain nothing. Ask any successful person, and you will probably discover that they’ve had more failures than the average person. What this should tell you is that success requires failure.
Making the Most of Failure
Take some time to consider what you learned from your failure. Write in your journal and get clear on you thoughts. Don’t underestimate the value of reflection.
When you learn from your mistakes, you don’t have to repeat them in the future. When you overcome failure, you will have more assurance that you can overcome subsequent letdowns too.
Use failure as a springboard to do more of the right things in the future. Make note of the things that didn’t work, and refocus your energies on things that are moving you ahead.
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