You’re only winning when you’re failing.
“It’s only failure unless you give up.” – Random guru.
Sounds good but…give up what exactly? Russell Brunson from ClickFunnels tried selling nearly 100 different things and had a mixed bag of failures and small wins before his biggest win. What if someone told him to never give up on his potato gun product? Or his herpes sore zapper? He needs to give up so he can move on to something that DOES work.
Here’s what they wished they articulated:
“It’s ok to give up on the means, but never give up on the end.” – Truth Cake
James Altucher had over a dozen businesses that failed but eventually had a couple that worked out very well for him. Many businesses and ideas are terrible and will fail. If you’re not failing, then you’re probably not trying anything, and also MOST IMPORTANTLY, if you’re not giving up, you’ve not moving on to get to something that will work.
I’d rather hang around someone that’s failed at 20 different things than someone that’s succeeded once. The person that has succeeded probably hasn’t been trying much in life – who knows if they have any perseverance for the end goal and if their current thing fails, will they be able to succeed again? Someone that has failed 20 times is trying things, can move on and try new things, and adaptable. Granted, they may fail at everything, but that’s unlikely. Perseverance rarely tends to go unrewarded.
The art is knowing WHEN to give up, change, and adapt to the circumstances of failure. Otherwise, we’re all stuck following Think and Grow Rich’s story of the man that was 3 feet from gold. The story is about a guy digging a hole to find gold and gave up digging any deeper when he was only 3 feet away. Sometimes, you need to know that you’re digging in the wrong hole and start over with another hole, or even a different idea altogether.
Refusing to give up at all in any circumstance will nearly guarantee prolonged failure. – Truth Cake.
Failure is ok and inevitable, but prolonged lasting failure is unacceptable.
The real goal is to know when to give up, and realize that failure is a part of the process almost always.
Also remember that if you’re not failing at all, your goals are probably too conservative or safe.
The hard part is knowing when to give up on a specific technique, strategy or process to get to your end goal. You shouldn’t give up on your end goal. But you can’t start thinking about the hard part about knowing when to give up (on the means) if you’re stuck listening to bad guru advice like “Never give up.” Winners give up (on the means). Winners fail (because their goal stretches them out of the world of guaranteed outcomes).
This concept is even present in relationships, when people stick with the wrong person for far too long. There’s an art to knowing when to split vs getting marriage counseling.
What’s something you tried that didn’t work but also realize now that you should have given up sooner so that you could move on to something else that ended up being much better?