Most successful people have experienced tremendous setbacks and failures, but they’ve learned valuable lessons that gave them the strength to keep pushing. Whether it’s a business flop, a termination or a total change of plan due to disaster, failures can position professionals for where they need to be in their career path.
Writer Vishnu Subramaniam knows a thing or two about that and shares how short-term failures led to long-term wins and what he learned from setbacks.
Failing doesn’t prevent you from starting again. After closing the firm, I thought I never wanted to do business again. I was not prepared to ever invest in a project that took up this much time, money and energy.
After an epic failure, you often think you will never want to do that activity again. You think you will never open another business, start another restaurant, go back for another degree or license, audition for another play.
Once we’ve experienced the pain of loss, wanting to avert future loss makes sense. We would rather play it safe.
But instead of never starting again, never taking a similar action and hiding from future challenges, I took some actions to help me recover from this failed business experience.
You don’t have to view failure and loss as the final straw. You can use failure and loss to propel you to future success.
Here are six ways to turn epic failures into awesome success:
1. Know when to pull the plug. When you’re failing at something, you cannot continue to do it for the sake of persistence or determination.