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When is Failure Actually Success?
Posted by lnclark1950 • 8/08/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: Failure, growth, success
Today my wife and I sponsored a Pancake Breakfast catered by world famous Chris Cakes www.chriscakes.com/. The reason we were doing the breakfast was to help raise money for a friend who is struggling financially because of an illness. For more info go to louisburgkickball.blogspot.com/.
We had hoped that at least 200 people would show up but only 25 attended. So it cost my wif eand I about $200 to raise $85 for our friend. To most people this would be a BIG failure.
I see it differently. My wife is a very talented person and for the first time in 23 years of marriage she took on something and saw it through. She grew in the process and that made every penny spent worth it.
What failure in your life became a success story and why.
User Comments
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This is actually quite sad to me. How did you market this event?-
I did not write this to cause saddness. I wrote it to encourage people to get off their butts and try to do something. Like timethief says we can learn from every failure and use them to move forward to greater things. For more about today's event go to realmenrock.blogspot.com and see how successful it really was.
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The reason why I ask is because some of the lessons learned from this event could be how to market any events in the future.
Did she contact local businesses to organize teams? My former office was always looking for ways to participate in community outreach through their foundation. It would have been easy to set up interdepartmental teams.
Did she contact local media? Local media here likes to cover charity fundraisers just like this one as human interest stories.
Did she contact neighboring churches? Perhaps a charity fellowship breakfast with neighboring churches with the kickball event afterwards?
Did she speak at other organizations? Showing up in person to schools, churches and businesses can have a big effect on participation.
Did she approach local community centers about having children participate in the kickball event? Did she contact school teachers in the area about organizing teams within their classrooms? Where children go, parents go.
It's great you're proud of her, but I really think we are also responsible for our own failures and need to learn from it. I am in a constant process of learning from my mistakes.
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Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something. — Morihei Ueshiba
I believe that every failure we experience carries within it all the information required to be successful next time. I also believe that it's the way we view setbacks and failures that causes us either to become risk takers and try again or to give up. I choose to look at all failures as stepping stones rather than as stumbling blocks. I think that as you and your wife review every step you took you will find all the information required to hold a more successful event in the future.-
I truly appreciate your comments.
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Thanks. I appreciate posting this thread on a very important subject. I recently held a discussion with members of a youth group on this same topic.
The youth had selected, planned and organized an event they thought would make them lots of money but it didn't. I made a presentation designed to encourage them not to give up, but to learn from the experience and to uncover the ingredients for being successful the next time they held a similar event.
This is an excerpt from my presentation:
"The difference between successful people (risk takers) and others is that when they experience failure, they do not allow it to keep them down. Successful people have a mindset that distinguishes them from others. Successful people don’t give their power away by choosing to be overly sensitive to what others think of them. They don’t give their power away by choosing to be “set in their ways” and resistant to change. Instead they are flexible, resilient and adept at making changes. They freely choose to accept every failure as a lesson in how to succeed in the future and then they make the adjustments required to achieve success."
Copyright ©2009 All Rights Reserved
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I don't believe in failure, period. I only believe in life and death.-
Death is the ultimate failure. Thanks be to God, Jesus made it possible for us to have life.
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Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. -Henry Ford
Similar to TT's quote, pretty much makes the point that those that can find opportunity and growth by falling down a few times usually are the ones that end up on top! Cheers to your wife!! Wish I had known...I LOVE PANCAKES!
If I wrote a book about failure and nobody bought it, was it a success?-
We had fun and laughed and joked about how few showed up. I ate my fill of pancakes too.
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Wow. That's a great gesture on your part for your friend. It can be seen be as a failure because you didn't raise enough money or but I would like to see it as a success because you took initiative to help in your friend in the time of need.
Kudos to you
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My wife if the one who did it.
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Failure doesn't really exist. It's like static shockwave radio, you try many channels until you find the right frequency. When you do, it's bright lights. But success is never final, and you will fail again at something along the way. As long as you keep in mind that you won't win every set of cards you play, you'll be just fine! -
"When is failure actually success?"
Answer: At the Lousburg Kickball Fun Day.
As I see it, the only place this event fell short was in the fund-raising aspect and that can be reviewed and changed next time (for example, getting more volunteer contributions to limit overhead).
This event was a success on so many levels:
1. You supported a person in need of dollars for medical treatment. That speaks volumes, even if you'd hoped to raise more for him.
2. You invited the whole community to participate in the day. Open door to everyone. Now you just need to find out why more people didn't make it. Sometimes it can be as simple as it ended up competing with another scheduled event.
3. You gained experience in how to organize and run a charity event.
I'm sure you've already got many ideas to try next time, or things you realize could be done differently.
4. You gave something back to your community, even though it ended up costing you some of your own money this time. Where is the failure in that? I can't find it.
5. You are modeling the notion that people can give of their time/$$ to help others, and to me, that is priceless.
Congratulations! This was a very cool thing to have done and I hope you feel proud of what you did in this first effort. This story might even make Rainhat feel better today!-
I hope this post not only encourages people but stirs them to take action and to feel good about what they attempt.
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A Bit of a crap one, but i failed a driving test twice before succeeding. But guess what. It made me a better and safer driver because of it, and every one noticed that too!
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Just think you could have said the hell with it I am taking the bus but you didn't. Great story!!
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I will try to keep this short.
When I was about 25, I worked as a commercial diver in the oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. On my first big trip offshore I made a mistake that cost time and money. When I returned to American Oilfield Diver's shop, the president, Dave Davenport, came up to me and asked how the trip went. I said, I f***ed up. Dave slapped me on the back and said, "Great. That's what I like to hear."
Everyone in the shop stopped what they were doing and listened.
I said, "Mr. Davenport, I'm not sure what that means. I cost somebody some time and money."
He said, "Carroll, this company is full of people who never f*** up, that's because they never turn a wheel. Keep turning wheels and you are going to f*** up. I like that."
That gave me a different opinion of f***ing up.
Hope no one is offended by the wording.-
I would be more offended if you tried to sugar coat what you were sharing. I would rather someone express themselves naturally and not change to try to please me. Thanks for what you shared. You gave me inspiration.
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I'm thinking that we may all define success in different ways. For long time, failure, to me, meant publicly saying I was going to do something, trying to do it, and then not being able to do what I wanted to do and feeling bad about it.
Despite the prevailing definitions of success in our society and in my family I changed my definition of success by dumping material wealth from my definition and introducing "balance" into it.
I believe that I’m a “success” when I’m setting realistic goals and achieving them ie. moving forward. My definition success does include achieving goals in the workplace, however, I believe “success” is applicable to finishing whatever I planned to do in any aspect of my life.
I know that I will not feel that I have lived a “successful life,” if I have not lived a balanced life. If the amount of time and attention I invest on a single aspect of my life exceeds the investment I make into the other aspects, I do not consider myself to be succeeding. When I recognize that I'm off-balance I reexamine my goals and bring my efforts back into balance again.-
Time thief I am always encouraged by your posts.
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Just keep going, that's success. Nothing else is required of us.
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Thank you for your comment.
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Society is to blame for this whole 'Failure is bad' attitude and the whole perception of things needing to be perfect. Most can not grasp the beauty of imperfection. This very website that we communicate on has become what it has because of many initial imperfections. I have always said this. But if you want to know if something will work well or make sense. Pitch it to a kid. If it makes sense to them then you are on to something. Why? Because they have not been exposed to 'negatives' and expectations society seems to portray. They are fresh and innocent. If One can maintain that innocent mind set through out the best years of their adult life, life will be good!
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Society is to blame for this whole 'Failure is bad' attitude and the whole perception of things needing to be perfect.
That's so true and so is your advice about pitching ideas to a kid.
It's interesting to reflect on the fact that our society is modeled on excellence, rather than on achievement.
If One can maintain that innocent mind set through out the best years of their adult life, life will be good!
I think you are actually referring to openmindedness rather than innocence. Evolution implies constant adaptation. A flexible branch can move with the wind, but a rigid one will break.
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Use this as a stepping stone, next time you attempt it, things will be different. A nice effort is always rewarded in just time.
Nice Going!-
Thanks for your encouragement. May I use your stepping stone comment for a post on my blog?
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Thanks @timethief
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I think failure is always success unless the individual chooses not to learn from it. Next time she does something like this she'll have beforehand experience and will execute it more efficiently such as advertising the breakfast. Not saying that she didn't try her best this time. We're humans and failure is constant, success is born out of that failure. At least that is what I believe.-
Thanks for your comment. I am proud of my wife. In our 23 years of marriage I have always been the one out front. It was my honor to be the one in the background.
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