In my series of small thoughts about business, goals and life, here are a few lines on failure.
When I look back to the goals I have set myself during the life time of this blog, I quickly notice that many of them haven’t happened as planned. But there is a funny thing I’ve noticed: I haven’t failed — my goals are just taking longer to achieve than I thought at first.
Business authors like to collect traits of successful business owners, often ignoring those who they see as failures. That’s one of the biggest critiques against books like “The Millionaire Next Door”: apparently, the failed businessmen share most of the traits with the successful ones.
But when I think about it now, I can’t help but wonder who is to say that those businessmen who are not (yet?) millionaires are failures? Maybe one or two of their ventures have not taken off as they were hoping. Maybe they have lost a good deal of money trying. But if they haven’t given up, I don’t think they have failed. They can still make it big time. Success is just taking longer than they thought.
What success is, is a topic for another discussion. But remember, overnight success doesn’t happen overnight, and failure is just delayed success. Hang in there, keep fighting, and check out Chris Guillebeau’s new (free) pdf report: 279 Days to Overnight Success.
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I downloaded 279 Days over the weekend and am eager to read it. My wife has read it already and says it is fantastic. Always nice to see you Jarkko.
Writer Dads last blog post..April
You’re absolutely right, Jarkko. The only real way to fail is to actually die. As long as you have a way to keep trying and use it, you haven’t failed. :)
Keep posting. :)
Jetro Laines last blog post..Tämä on nyt viimeinen japanivideo, eli lähtöpäivä.
Thanks, Sean and Jetro!
I can’t wait to put out the next version of this blog. It’s going to rock my world — hopefully others’ too ;)
Hi Jarkko:
It’s been a while since our last conversation on my blog or on your blog. I saw your tweet and facebook update once a while and glad that you are doing great and making good progress.
I love this topic. Just download the PDF and will read it. I have not updated my blog for a LONG time, since I started my project.
Personally, if you are doing better job than you did yesterday. You are a failure for just that one day.
Looking forward to see your new Text Art theme.
Will be back soon!
Terence Chang
Just wanted to say how much I enjoy your blog, and I hope you don’t mind I posted a link to this post on my new blog… http://jarkkolaine.com/2009/04/18/there-is-no-such-thing-as-failure/ Thank you for putting a positive spin on things!
I agree. As long as we are still alive we can always come up of something that will make us a better person. I like your article. I learn a lot from you.
This is a great lesson, one that took me WAAAAYYYY too long to learn. But I’m glad I finally did!
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