Our Approach to Failure

Hey Friends,

Lets talk about failure and making mistakes.

For me: Failure = Progress

Whatever line of work we are in, we are going to mess up and drop the ball at times, it comes with the territory of trying new things and taking action. Nobody is perfect.

Dyson is a hugely successful British brand well known for it’s vacuum cleaners. Dyson wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the grit and perseverance of it’s founder Robert Dyson. He failed 5126 times, he cited the 5127th time as the breakthrough for when he got the vacuum right.

Success only comes when we confront our mistakes. If we don’t evaluate what’s not working or why we got things wrong, and then adjust our approach, we are not learning, improving or growing.

Mistakes and failure are gifts and part of the journey in making ourselves, our teams and our business better. Sometimes it’s difficult to accept you made a mistake. Be humble. As soon as we own our failures and recognise what we should have done differently, we are on a path to a free upgrade of ourselves.

Thanks for reading.

David

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

Resources Of The Week

Book - Matthew Syed - Black Box Thinking. When incidents happen on an aircraft, investigators learn a lot from the black box onboard. This forms much of the theory behind this great book. What can we learn from evaluating the data from our everyday life? How can we use this data to improve ourselves, just like investigators use data from black boxes to improve the safety of aviation. A very eye opening read illustrating a shocking disparity in how different industries such as aviation and healthcare approach and learn from failure.

Book - Austin Kloen - Show Your Work I wanted to share this really quick read I came across recently. If you are looking to build a personal brand or contribute content online, it starts with getting outside your comfort zone and sharing your work daily for the world to see. This resonated with me as I am currently 28 consecutive days into my journey of sharing my work daily on LinkedIn.

Blog Post - 6 Habits of Highly Productive People. A post I wrote last week on Medium. It highlights 6 habits which people adopt to help them be highly productive and ultimately very successful.

Quote of the Week

“A failure to learn from mistakes has been one of the single greatest obstacles to human progress.” - Matthew Syed

Motivation Hit

Ralph Smart - Self-Esteem. Struggle with self-esteem and how you see yourself? Watch this video to see how it starts with accepting yourself.

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