Humans, in general, it is in our nature to be scared of failure and failing, most people can’t afford to fail just once, it will seem that the whole world came crashing down, but do we really need to be scared of failure?
Failure or failing doesn’t mean it is over for us!
If we fail or let's say when we fail at something, be it business, plans, dreams or in the desired lifestyle, we should know it is a lesson to learn, we just learn the wrong way to do business, make a plan or probably we’ve taken the wrong measures to achieve our dreams or lifestyle.If we didn’t fail at the first, second, third or fourth try, not everybody is lucky to make it the first try, many will say there is no luck in business, true but you having the right plan that works out for you in the first try is the greatest luck you have, if you didn’t fail you’ll never know the wrong way of doing it.
How many times did Thomas Alva Edison fail exactly?
According to Rutgers, Myth Buster: Edison's thousands of attempts, "The source of the story about Edison trying thousands of experiments or materials is probably an 1890 interview in Harper's Monthly Magazine."I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and appears to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty, as perhaps you know, was in constructing the carbon filament, the incandescence of which is the source of the light. Thomas A Edison
We will never experience the pain of failure, which many seems to be okay with, what if everything turns sideways after it’s been good for a while? Is it a lack of planning? why do so many successful companies who seem to be doing pretty okay at first shut down in no time and most never to be heard of again?I said: 'Isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven't been able to get any results?' Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: 'Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won't work! Thomas A Edison
Those questions I’ll leave to All folks readers to leave a comment to.
SO SHOULD WE ACCEPT FAILURE???
The simplest answer to this question is NO! But most people would easily accept defeat and take it as a YES in action, When will fail at something be it academics, business, dreams, plans or lifestyle the biggest most make is they GIVE UP!We are afraid to fail again so we don’t try again, we totally forgot we’ve gotten an experience already, we know what to do and what not to do, We already have a first-class VIP experience seat on how to do it wrong, so don’t do it that way again!!!
Most people simply because they fail at some point in life will give up their dreams and try to chase new adventures, leaving out something they are extremely good at because they didn’t get the desired results or because they failed after trying a few times.
My Own Example:
In 2013, I created a news and entertainment blog with Blogger, it was with the Blogspot.com extension and no custom domain, wrote some articles about 15 and I tried monetizing immediately, don’t laugh at me, back then all I cared about is to make money with my blog, but 15 articles for about 4 months the income was $0.00, I Got frustrated and I decided to quit and try new things. Tried CPA, Affiliate marketing and Micro jobbing, made few bucks from micro jobbing but CPA and affiliate marketing I wasn’t doping pretty well, I decided to QUIT.I started to learn and work on a new trade and I spent too much time focusing on that, I made money a bit from my new business and at first, it seems like it will be like this forever, I forgot I had a blog that I’ve worked on, my new business got no guarantee, no salary involves, just mere luck and lots of sleepless nights, but because I was getting snack fees I kept doing it, putting all my hope in a business that has no future.
I totally forgot my passion for the internet and marketing, it was profit over a passion for me! Nothing wrong in profit over passion, but as long you’re passionate about something it should bring you money, if it’s not bringing money, it’s not a good thing to be passionate about I think.
Learning My Lesson The Hard Way
A few months ago, a news was trending in my country about a Nollywood actor, it generated a lot of internet buzz and a lot of people was trying to search about him, I was trying to confirm the trending news so I Googled the man’s name to my greatest surprise I saw a familiar link in PR3 (Page Rank 3 ) on Google results.My old news and entertainment blog under blogger, got ranked number 3 in search terms related to that actor, I was indeed curious of what happened and how tried getting back the Gmail I created the blog with and took me about 2 weeks to get it back, cos I already lost the number on the account, had to go through extra verification process and when I logged in on Blogger and checked my stats, I almost burst in tears! That single post got 43,876 views and reads and 95% of the traffic directly from Google search! Woahhh Now let's calculate how much I lost!!!
If I had 3 ad units on the article page and I got 43,876 already, despite the fact that it is not a rich nor paying keyword I'll be making at worst $260 CPM {Revenue earned: cost per 1000 impressions} on just a single blog post. If the blog was updated regularly and with quality content, I will definitely earn more and I would have gotten the exposure I need.
Looking at my example, if my blog wasn't on the Blogger platform I might have never gotten the opportunity to learn from my mistake, many websites and blog owners like me have quit or are about to quit after trying so hard with no results, this experience got me back in blogging, If I kept the blog active and manage to even update with a post every week, I'll know about the buzz period and would have made the best use of the free traffic, converting those free traffic to cash would have been no problem.
Assuming that my blog was on WordPress or probably hosted with a Webhosting service and after the first year I didn't renew, site will be terminated and I might never get to know what I've missed, but I was lucky to be able to learn from my mistake, a blog I gave up 4 years ago, would have given me the extra financial freedom I so much desired after 4 years, So many blogs and websites shuts down regularly every day not every one of them is offline because the owner is "dud and buried" most shuts down after experiencing failure in the first year or two. They'll say I'm not making money and they will give up.
Regardless of what you dream, plan or fantasize about, failure isn't an option for anyone. But
What to do after failure?
First thing first, no wallowing in pain! Simple and efficient solutions should be the next act of plan, like me I replan, restarted and decided never to give up until I can say I was a noob now I'm a pro, regardless of whatever you failed at, it isn't over yet, you can start over, continue from where you failed or with a new and easy plan, try to adjust your time schedules, seek advice and work 3x harder than you've ever done. Don't be afraid to ask for help and don't ever let failure affect your self-confidence.
You're not a failure cos you're failing, You'll only be a failure when you give up. Richard Omisore