Making mistakes…

Good afternoon dear reader & welcome to my world for another week. Following on from my last article & ‘Learning From It’ reflections, I was thinking about the situations where we make mistakes & how one can also learn from these experiences & again, move on.

If you do not think you have high blood pressure, this story may change your mind. Or cause your blood pressure to rise. New guidelines from the American Heart Association & the American College of Cardiology (yes, given my heart experience I read this sort of stuff), define high blood pressure as 130/80 or greater. Under this standard, the number of adults with hypertension will rise to 103 million from 72 million under the previous standard. Stress causes blood pressure to rise. And fear of failure causes stress. Therefore, learning to manage our fear of failure is a healthy idea.

This topic has been on my mind the last few days after reading an article 1 where the writer quotes James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola Co., who said: “If we are not making mistakes, we are not trying hard enough.” Jeff Bezos, arguably the most successful entrepreneur in the world, adds: "If you are going to take bold bets, they are going to be experiments & you do not know ahead of time if they are going to work.”

Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, recently described his business philosophy: ”There is nobody I have ever met who bats over .500 or 50-50 on making the right decisions. There is nobody who can see around corners. Nobody can. But the people who do succeed are the ones who cut their bad decisions off quicker than others & let their good ones run longer than others."

What do the following Forbes Quotes have in common?                                                                       
• Denis Waitley: "Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat."
• Henry Ford: "The only mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."
• C. S. Lewis: "Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement."
• Robert T. Kiyosaki: "Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success."
• Zig Ziglar: "It's not how far you fall, but how high you bounce which counts."                                          
Robert F. Kennedy makes the point well: "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."  2

Unfortunately, many people view failure differently. Most of us seek to avoid failure at all costs. If we do fail we try to rectify the situation & move past it as soon as possible. So my friends, can you name your latest or greatest failure? We should reflect therefore how we can use the situation for one of transformation to another level.

We should all take a look at our life today. Most probably, no one else is looking, & the person who will benefit most from it is you! Insecure people can be the most difficult to reach because they are desperate to hide what they perceive as inadequacies & failures.

And you will be able to testify with Winston Churchill: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue which counts."

Thank you for taking the time to be with me once again. I hope my journey may encourage you also. This is Kenn Butler in Paradise, Nelson, with my best wishes for the week ahead. I look forward to being with you all again next weekend.


 
www.kennbutler.com