#Middlebury #WinningWays
by Pat Iannuzzi
If offered a choice between success and failure, most people would choose success. Unfortunately, we usually aren’t permitted to pick between the two outcomes. We generally get what we get in spite of our best intentions. The reality is that all of us experience both success and failure in our daily lives. Success is usually joyous and uplifting. Failure is often disheartening and painful. But while failure in any undertaking can have adverse effects, it’s usually not the actual unfavorable results that cause us problems, but rather the negative impact failure has on our attitude.
A failure is simply an isolated occurrence. Failure is part of life. We all experience it, usually more than we savor success. Most great achievers fail more often than they succeed. However, we must not allow failure to affect our overall self-confidence or self-worth. If we do, it can significantly diminish our potential for future success. Unfortunately, because of the pain and humiliation that is associated with failure, some of us go to great lengths to avoid it.
We have all heard stories of very successful people who, on their road to achievement, also encountered many setbacks and disappointments. In 1923, Babe Ruth struck out more times than any other Major League Baseball player in history. This record of failure in the batting box could easily have had a negative impact on his self-image as a baseball player. That same year, however, he hit 60 home runs, a record that stood for 34 years until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961.
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV job because someone thought she was “unfit for TV.” Stephen King’s first book, “Carrie,” was rejected by 30 publishers until one finally accepted it. Walt Disney was fired from an early newspaper job because he “lacked imagination and good ideas.” Jerry Seinfeld was booed off the stage the first time he tried comedy.
Most of us want to hit home runs, but if we let the fear of striking out deter us from taking ferocious swings whenever we get up to bat, we will dramatically limit our potential. As Babe Ruth demonstrated, you can’t have one without the other. It’s perfectly fine to be a good, solid player who only swings at the good pitches, thereby avoiding a lot of strikeouts, but that also means you won’t hit that many home runs. If you choose to go all out for the big prize, you have got to be prepared to stumble frequently along the way.
Failure is part of the process of getting to the next step. It’s not that we should necessarily welcome failure, but neither should we permit it to devastate us. Instead we should analyze our failures to learn from our mistakes. Failure is part of the process toward discovery. It’s a learning opportunity for identifying what went wrong and what we should do better. Failure shouldn’t limit our potential; it should help expand it.
Winston Churchill once said, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” If we control our emotions and continually respond to failure with a positive mindset, not only can we minimize any negative impact on our current situation, we also can use it to facilitate and accelerate our journey toward our ultimate goals.
Pat Iannuzzi of Symbiont Performance Group, Inc. is a performance consultant, trainer and coach focusing on selling, presentation and interpersonal skills. He lives in Litchfield and can be reached at 860-283-9963 or piannuzzi@symbiontnet.com.
