Will we ever know if something is going to work or not other than by trying?
The only fact we know is uncertainty. We are continuously trying, whether it is new words, bicycle routes, marketing experiments, or new product development.
Unfortunately, things always do not turn out the way we had planned or expected. Sometimes we come to a complete dead-end and sometimes we just need to change the course of direction slightly to be able to carry on.
The important thing is to move on, to keep trying, and to count every error, mistake, and negative result as just feedback in order for us to adjust our course of action.
The worst thing that can happen or we can do is to: stop. Paralysed by our own mistakes and feeling a failure. It is here that you need to turn things around and change the way you look at them. If we have tried 50 ways and none have given results we are 50 steps closer to finding a solution. There is a saying “The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one.”
I can’t even begin to count the number of mistakes I have made, not even in the past seven days. I have tried, that’s all I know and that’s what brings me here. The number of experiences I have (from my mistakes). Sir Humphrey Davy said “I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes”. The fact and the reason is that we often try tens or hundreds of times for each success and in the process learn to correct, avoid, and adjust all that we have learnt to achieve that one point of success.
There is immense power in every step of failure, every punch that comes landing, Left, Right, and Centre. For each mistake, you are one step closer and one step ahead of the rest. It is only a matter of perspective. The best example of this is the Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, the American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world’s first successful motor-operated airplane. What you miss from their glorified story is possibly the hundreds of accidents, including several near-death experiences.
There is one thing for sure, whatever you do is certainly uncertain. The beauty of it is that you can always use this to your advantage.
One of the speeches I give is on The Power of Failure. If you are an incubator or accelerator, and you want to help your entrepreneurs it is important that you help them build the mindset of using the power of failure to their advantage. Encouraging them to try, fail, learn and repeat with the empowered feeling that each time they are one step closer.