061 - A Conversation About Failure

Steady Focused

A Conversation About Failure - Episode 061 of Steady Focused w/ Simeon Hendrix

Okay let's do it. Let's have a conversation about failure.
Failure is one of the greatest motivators known to human kind. It will deliver to you, the keys to a great kingdom. Failure is ALSO an abusive monster and it will stop your face into the ground.

So what’s the difference?? Mindset.

Bruce Lee tells us - Do not ask for an easy life, but ask for the strength to endure a difficult one.

The only way to success is through failure.
Elon Musk - The man who is literally altering the trajectory of human kind. Projecting us into multi-planet habitation. You know how many setbacks the Tesla company has endured? Do you know how many times Space X’ rockets have failed?

Do you know that this man literally sleeps at manufacturing plants of his companies in order to have a quicker response to problem solving and an quicker way to overcome roadblocks?

Everyday we hit roadblocks. Everyday we have failures. Every day. It’s our perception, it’s our mindset about how we allow those to shape our destiny.

As a child - we don’t know how to talk. We don’t know how to walk. We don’t know how to ask our mother for milk. We are totally innocent. Totally dependent. And yet we learn to walk, care for ourselves, communicate.
As a child, we see the evolution through failure as natural. We see the failed attempts at walking as part of the process. We give encouragement. We give boundaries. We give support. Of course he’s not going to know how to talk right off the bat. We love. We nurture. We encourage.

But at some point during our growth, it reaches a point, we automatically expect evolution to just BAM be there. We demand of ourselves instant perfection. We demand of ourselves to totally remove a learning curve. We demand of ourselves so much and many times it can result into abuse over failing.

The alternative - do we want and easy unchallenged life? No. The joy of life is the climb. The challenge, the grind. It’s in the moments of pushing ourselves to the limits. Pushing ourselves beyond the boundaries.

The challenge is what fulfills us. The seeking. It’s about the perspective that we put upon ourselves and others.

Failures have real consequences. Failures have very real consequences. Every failure has a very real consequence. Failures suck. Failures burn. Failures… I lose clients over failures. I can lose a relationship over a failure. I’ve lost materialistic things over a failure. In extreme cases - people will die from our failures. Know that. Accept that.

Failures have very real consequences. Understand that. Know that. Take ownership of that. As we grow and evolve we seek to mitigate the loss, we seek to avoid the failures.

But understand that failures are the building blocks of success. If Edison didn’t fail 10,000 times trying to create the light bulb - he wouldn’t have created it.

Failures are a necessary part of progression and evolution. The difference is “what is my perspective.” - Because I fail, am I a failure? - Ask yourself. I say “hell no.” I will examine this failure. I will own this failure. I will examine why this failure occurred and seek to implement systems and seek to avoid a failure in the future.

Fail. Accept it. Take ownership of the failure. Don’t blame others. Do not blame others in a moment failure because I will miss a wonderful opportunity for growth. The situation has happened. Period. I can’t change that. But what I can do is accept it and learn from it. But if I blame someone else for this, then I will rob myself of the evolution of this.

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