We’ve all read, watched on TV or seen on the Internet people who claim to know the “secrets of success.” They often talk about the two, three or four things you absolutely have to do in order to be successful.
They tell you that you can get rich “flipping” houses. They claim that you can lose 10 pounds in 48 hours. They suggest you make your fortune by investing in penny stocks. You’ll see a network marketing pitch person name-dropping famous people and saying you can make $100,000 a month—by working at home! Part time! Then there are those even more dubious suggestions that if you wire someone in some other country $4,000, they’ll send you $1 million in return.
But you and I know that if something sounds too good to be true, chances are that it is too good to be true. There are no shortcuts to success.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve read the autobiographies of Amy Schumer, Thomas Edison, Phil Knight and Bruce Springsteen. What struck me in reading about them was not how much fame and money they achieved but how much failure they endured before becoming successful. They all had a don’t-quit mentality.
Amy Schumer wrote about performing for free or simply for a meal. She would do her stand-up routines just about anywhere and everywhere to get experience and exposure. It wasn’t easy. Not every time on stage was a success. But she kept on performing and honing her craft.
In Phil Knight’s book, Shoe Dog, I learned what a huge challenge he had in starting Nike. First, he flew to Japan and signed a contract with Onitsuka for Tiger shoes when he had no experience or money. A few years later, he lost the relationship with Onitsuka and had to figure out how to design shoes, find factories overseas and bring the finished products back to the U.S. He faced many seemingly insurmountable challenges, but he continued on.
Failure was always in the back of Knight’s mind, but he had an optimistic view of it—he wanted to “fail fast.” He writes: “But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons.”
And we’ve all heard Thomas Edison’s famous quote about how many times he failed before inventing the light bulb. “I have not failed,” he said. “I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
Let’s not call these secrets
So while not claiming to know any “secrets of success,” I will tell you two things that I believe you need to do in order to be successful. They are not secrets. Just good advice.
First, pick a pursuit that you are passionate about. If you’re passionate about it, you’ll be more motivated when it comes to this second part. And this second part is: Be prepared to fail (often and a lot) before you become successful.
Someone once told me, “If someone is better than you, then they have been through more failures than you. If someone is not as good as you, they have not been through as many failures.”
As a business coach, I’ve seen so many people become despondent, disappointed and deflated when they encounter failure as they pursue something important to them. Since they have not factored in failure on their road to success, they often either reduce their goal (thus, setting their sights lower) or they abandon their pursuit altogether and go back to what they were already doing.
Only the truly successful few use failure as an indicator of progress and a motivator for making more progress. They push through short-term setbacks in the pursuit of their overall big and worthwhile goal.
Learn to view failure as a positive barometer. Each time you fail, you have the opportunity to learn something important that will ultimately move you forward. Remember that there usually is no gain without some kind of pain.
Embrace failure in order to succeed. Do that, and you’ll do what you do better.