by Annie Kaycora

Created on: July 25, 2010   Last Updated: July 26, 2010

"When you lose, don't lose the lesson" It's a bit unfortunate, the stigma that comes with the word failure. It is connotatative of so many negative things, when the absolute truth is: Failure lays the stepping stones down to reach success! The best things in life are not meant to be obtained with sheer ease. Greatness comes with big sacrifice and is designed to force us to grow, throw us flat on our faces, get us out of our comfort zones, and send us through the ringer. I was privileged enough to be mentored by very successful entrepreneurs. They said the best thing you can do for yourself first, is to shift the way you perceive failure. Look forward to failure, feel the gratitude in the lessons that come with it, and realize that every "no" in life, brings you closer to the "yes!".

Every person has a different failure quota to reach before the big golden success. One man might need to fail 989 times and on his 990th time, he becomes wildly successful. Meanwhile, another man might only need to fail 120 times, and on that 121st time, big success! The point of this being, none of us get to know what our number is, we just need to keep on keeping on with the right thinking in place. If you knew your failure count was only 235 in life, and that on 236 you were going to make it, would you feel bad right around 200 failures? NO! You would feel like you're on fire because you were so close to making it. We were all dealt a different hand in life. If you look at failures as stepping stones to success, there is no way to feel discouraged, only more and more excited that you're closer to making it. Like my mentor said, it's like pushing a car up a hill. You're on the other side of the car pushing it, and can't see that you're actually right at the crest of the hill about to make it -that's why you need to keep going, always.

Now, we are human beings after all, and it would be unreasonable to expect our minds to be 100% positive all of the time about our failures. We can feel disappointment and defeat, but we just can't nurture those feelings into hours, days and weeks. Move onto the next hash mark on your failure quota and you'll harvest great success in due time.

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