Fail...The Whole World is Watching

Michael Jordan is famous for saying, "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."

Ever wonder why social media can be so misleading and frankly, a whole bunch of B.S.? Simple. All you see are people's successes. People generally aren't sharing their failures. This creates a false perception for people of what success really looks like. Take Michael Jordan for example. What do you think of when you think of MJ? Hmmm.. maybe 6 NBA championships, 5 MVP awards, 10 scoring titles, 14 All-Star Game selections...okay you get the idea. What you don't think of is all the times he's failed. All of the times he didn't win or missed the game-winning shot. Michael Jordan spent most of the 1980s on bad Bulls teams losing and getting bullied by the Pistons. But it takes a true basketball fan to ever hear about that.

We tend to put more emphasis on the results rather than the work it takes to get there. And why is that? Well, going back to my first point I think social media paints us a flawed picture. It teaches us that we can have success in "just 30 days" or that we can, "get rich in 10 minutes using this trick". Ask any billionaire about what they miss the most from their earlier days. It won't be their second wife or a yacht they used to have. It's the chase. It's the struggle. A large majority of them wish they could do it all over again. They wish they could go back to the time they worked out of a garage or the time they were told they, "weren't creative enough" to make cartoons. The moral of the story is failure breeds success. Rarely will you ever meet someone who found success instantly. I'll even go as far as to argue that the most successful people in the world would never have even found that success without experiencing tremendous failure and struggle along the way. Failure brings experiences and experiences bring growth. Without growth, we don't get better and if we don't get better we don't find success. I'm a big believer in the idea that the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is how they deal with failure. What they do with it. Do they quit? Then they probably won't be very successful. Do they use it as fuel and momentum? Then they will probably be much better off.

Success is relative to you and your goals. I can't tell you what it is. It's about what you want in life. It's not all about money unless you want it to be. For me personally, it's never been about money and it probably never will be. When I evaluate myself and take a hard look inside it all comes down to building something that matters, filling my life with as many meaningful and impactful experiences as possible, and being there for the ones I love the most. I like failure because I learn. It can hurt, yes. I've been there before where I've gone at something at 1,000 miles an hour only to fall flat on my face and leave myself open to harsh ridicule. At times, it still hurts me to this day. But I learned and I grew as a person because of it. I like to say if you stack enough failures on top of each other eventually you are going to reach the top of the ladder of success.

I know I bounced around a bit here but I hope the message is clear. Don't be afraid to fail and don't be afraid to tell people, post about it, or even put it on a billboard. We all fail. It's okay. It's what we do with that failure that decides what comes next. We can either dwell in our failures and stay normal or we can learn from them and quickly realize that the sky is actually the limit when it comes to our dreams and desires.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a GREAT day!