Change Your Definition of Failure

BY : Dennise Demming

 

Doing … Undoing … Redoing!  At some point we have to move from thinking to doing.  Nothing happens unless we take action.  But taking action means clarifying what you want to do; why you want to do it; how you will approach it and even clarifying the outcomes you expect.

Fear often keeps us from Doing.  Fear of failure.  Fear that others will laugh.  Fear that we will stand out from the comfort of the crowd.

On November 1st, TEDxPortofSpain will be examining some of the factors that help or hinder us from Doing … Undoing … Redoing.   We expect these talks to help us move from ideas worth sharing to ideas worth doing.

This year’s focus on doing in no way diminishes the importance of the thinking phase because it is out of great thought that great actions emerge.  The biggest risk of doing is the risk of failure.  Sometimes we need to embrace the failures that occur.

In reflecting on his success, Michael Jordan, former American basketball player said:  

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 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 flies through the air with his eyes on the basket at a 1988 NBA Slam Dunk contest (Source: Dailymail.co.uk)

The more you take action, the greater your chances of both failure and success.

To boost the ratio of successful outcomes, our actions must be intentional and deliberate  while incorporating the learnings from our failures.  Valuable learnings can often times be gleaned from other persons’ failures but we have to be humble enough to examine and learn from other experiences.

It is a brave soul who will do, undo and redo!