There are two Michael Jordan quotes that truly are amazing. Actually, he has quite a few quotes on this topic; the two I am going to focus on are some of my favorites.
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan
Failure leads to Success
I recently wrote Taking Risks; Meeting Opportunities because of my own life experiences. I’ve been too afraid at times to move on; mainly because I’m afraid of failure myself. However, should you be afraid to fail? Or simply learn from those around you and the mistakes that you’ve made in your life.
The best example I can currently think of involves Steve Jobs. We all know of the risks he took in the computer and entertainment industries, but amidst his success there was also failure.
Jobs failed better than anyone else in Silicon Valley, maybe better than anyone in corporate America. By that I mean Jobs did what only the greatest entrepreneurs can do: learn from their failures. I don’t mean learn from their mistakes. I mean learn from their abject, humiliating, bonehead, epic fails. Celebrating Steve Jobs’ Failures
The moral of this post is to accept failure. Own up to your failures and most importantly never stop learning. As soon as you give up on learning; you are abandoning success too.
And just because I can, I’ll leave you with one more MJ quote:
I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.