#1 Business Goal Setting Principle For Success

Section 5.2: Responding To Failure

Whether it's for business goal setting or personal goal setting, you can ensure more effective results by understanding upfront that you will face unexpected obstacles while pursuing your goals. The real question is, "How will you deal with these challenges?"

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In life, and in business, you can measure the size of an accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome during the process of getting from point A to point B.

A common phrase you hear when a business deal falls through is, "It's just business."Business people understand that sometimes things just don't work out, and when that happens they quickly pick up their marbles and move along to find the next deal. 

So why when things don't go according to plan in our personal lives do so many people take things so personally? Do they not understand that sometimes things just don't work out? Why can't they simply accept it and get on with their life? 

Why is a personal defeat so much harder to shake off than a business failure? The answer is many people have a really hard time accepting failure, even though they know it's always a possible outcome. 

"There is no luck involved in being successful. By most accounts, luck is a myth. LUCK - is when Optimism and Preparedness meets Opportunity."

Sadly, the primary reason (and excuse) for not living up to one's full potential is that a lot of people are not willing to accept personal responsibility for their present situation. According to them, it's always someone else's fault, rather than just looking at it as temporary setback. 

It would be so much more effective if people could quickly shake off personal failures and chalk it up to, "It's just business in this crazy, exciting, amazing life I'm living." 

To be clear, we're not saying that you dismiss the lessons to be learned from any failure. To the contrary, when you fall down - stay down long enough to fully learn and fully appreciate how you got there, learn from your mistake so you don't repeat. Then, get yourself off the floor and push forward, chalking up that failure as - the cost of your education.

Best Personal and Business Goal Setting Secret to Overcome Failure

It's easy to react emotionally to a situation, or to blame others or your environment for your own inaction:

Common reasons/excuses for inaction include:

  • It's the way I was raised
  • I was abused
  • I didn't get to go to college
  • I'm an addict or alcoholic
  • The government keeps people like me down
  • The school system failed me
  • My employer always holds me back
  • Times are hard right now
  • I've never had the time or resources

Blah, Blah, Blah!

To React - is to give up control of the situation, and of yourself.

To Respond - however, is to empower yourself with the notion that, "I you can recover from anything, no matter how difficult it may be."  Using a medical analogy, whatever the medicine is that you must take to heal the wounds of failure, you will willingly accept and take it.

Winners routinely choose to Respond to the medicine, rather than to have a negative Reaction to the medicine.

To React, or to Respond - let's think about which is the best choice and why.

True leaders committed to responding positively to their failures (By the way, everyone experiences failure in their lifetime), immediately disregard the above excuses. Leaders understand that there is one major prerequisite before achieving any level of real success in the world. They know that the mentality of "taking ownership and self-reliance" is essential to personal and business goal setting activities.

Possessing the ability to look inward and take personal ownership for one's present condition, regardless of circumstance, is the sign of a mature individual who will eventually rise to succeed in life.

It's a sad fact that people who allow themselves to wear their self-imposed "shackles of low expectations" won't recognize the many opportunities available to them, or that might be staring them right in the face. They simply remain blinded by their fear of failing again.

Self-helpers, on the other hand, take on each task positively, promptly, and are determined to learn from their mistakes in order to gain the experience that will eventually lead to success.

To react quickly, negatively and emotionally, is lazy and demonstrates a lack of self-discipline. This will work again you in both your personal and business goal setting journeys.

Instead, teach yourself to thoughtfully consider your best course of action when faced with failure, and then respond in a positive way.  Responding will always be the better choice in your personal or business goal setting activities and will serve you well as your pursue your ambitions.. 

"Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving."

- Dennis Waitley

Success Lesson #12: After Failure, What?

A great many people never really discover their best selves until they are faced with ruin or tragedy. They do not seem to know how to bring out their reserve will-power until they are forced by an overwhelming disaster.

Some never find their inner reserves - they simply fall to the floor and give up on life and on themselves.

"Defeat is nothing but the first step to something higher."

- Wendell Phillips

However, tragic events do force many to look inward and to call upon their mental and physical reserves to pick themselves up so that they can move onward and upward to never again find themselves in the same situation.

The real test of character is what a man or woman does after a failure. What will she do next?

What resources, what inventiveness will her failure arouse in her? Will she discover new sources of inner strength and power? Will the circumstance bring out her reserve energies, doubling her determination, or will it dishearten her forever?

"Personal and business goal setting principles are essential for living a successful life and maximizing your career to the fullest. Without a clear plan, you limit your potential for success."

To get up again and again, to wrestle triumph from the grasp of defeat is a noble ideal that belongs in your personal and business goal setting curriculum. This one single trait is the main secret of the successful man or woman.

There is no failure for the one who gets back up each and every time he falls down; rebounds like a rubber ball; persists when every one else gives up and who pushes on when every one else turns back.

Whether in your personal or business goal setting activities, always remain determined, persist, and do all you can do before ever calling it quits. But if you do fail, learn from your failure and get back in the game so that you can eventually celebrate your success.

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