Failure: 5 Things Every Self-Employable Needs to Know

You’re a failure — and that’s awesome! Let me explain why.

Failure follows self-employables — and that’s a good thing. Let me explain.

Self-employment is a scary, time-consuming and exhausting endeavor. It requires significant risk, and only those who work hard ultimately succeed in self-employment.

The only way to succeed, however, is through failure. Each failure brings us one step closer to success, and those who fail time and time again are on the path to happiness.

There’s no sugar-coating it: failure SUCKS. In fact, I’d say failure sucks out loud, in bold and even in pink. Yet those who understand what failure is all about are better equipped than others to cope with it, and eventually, succeed in self-employment.

Failure: What Is It, and What Does It Mean?

Simply put: failure is a lack of success. It can affect anyone, at any time, during any endeavor. Failure also comes in many flavors, including:

• Personal: If you set a personal goal but fail to reach it, you’re a personal failure.
• Professional: If you want to land a new client but fail to seal the deal, you’re a professional failure.
• Social: If you want to connect with a friend or a special someone in your life but fail to live up to his or her expectations, you’re a social failure.

Personally, I consider myself a failure expert, and I’d like to share five things I’ve learned about failure:

1. Failure is easy.

It takes zero effort to fail. If you don’t try, don’t give 100% or don’t care, congrats, you’re failing beautifully!

2. Failure is constant.

You will fail — regardless of how hard you try to prevent it. However, how you choose to respond to failure is up to you.

3. Failure proves your doubters right.

Every time we fail, we’re proving our doubters right. But remember, the goal is to win wars, not battles. So, let the doubters rejoice in your failure, and going forward, you can find new and exciting ways to prove them wrong.

4. Failure makes us stronger than ever before.

Failure makes us question who we are and what we’re all about. It can break us and prevent us from being who we are and getting where we want to go. Or, failure can empower us, and it can push us to do everything possible to prevent us from making the same mistake twice.

5. Failure brings out the best in us.

Failure DOES NOT define us. It does, however, provide an opportunity to shape our future. We can either let failure push us toward success, or we can let it cascade into failure after failure.

Fail Fast. Fail Hard. And Fail Often.

Each failure is different, but we can learn more from failure than success. Because once we know what doesn’t work, we can move one step closer to finding the true solution to any problem.

So, here’s my recommendation: fail spectacularly, as much as you can. Because the more you fail, the closer you’ll move to success. And once you achieve your goal (after many spectacular failures), you’ll know you’ve earned it — and no one can take that away from you.