How Many Times Is Failure Necessary Before Success?
The way I see it failure can either teach me something valuable or discourage any hope of success. Both will cost me. Figuring out what I am willing to pay determines my return on investment.
For the last two years I’d load a thousand parcels of freight into cans by night followed by deicing FedEx aircrafts until sunrise on extremely cold and snowy winter mornings. At the end of my shift I find a restroom to shower and shave before heading to teach on my other job.
McDonald’s would often be the easiest pitstop for breakfast. Whenever a bowtie was the neckwear of choice I’d have to perch my iPhone on a baby changer in the restroom while replaying a “How to tie a bowtie” YouTube over and over. That process would take 15 min. and a dozen attempts in the beginning.
You can imagine the exhaustion of working two jobs. Standing in a restroom chocking myself out for an image of success that could go unnoticed by those I was attempting to impress character upon. Yet I kept at at for months and hundreds of practices until one day I crushed it in one try. And everyday after has been the same. A perfect knot without the stress of several novice attempts to become a bowtie pro.
Isn’t success bred with a similar formula? It starts with a vision, requires many practice trials, and a lot of failed attempts. That’s what I teach my students anyway.
Whether it’s bowtie mastery or gracefully maneuvering four stories in the air to remove ice from surface of a Boeing 777 aircraft. We all start somewhere and then life deals all sorts of new hands to complicate the process. But if you keep showing up and playing to win almost everyone will eventually see you as a champion that hardly ever looses.
How many times you have failed won’t even matter because all you do is win —eventually.
