High Achievers Don’t Let Excuses Justify Their Failures

Posted by John R. Stoiber on March 9, 2015
Posted in: Achievement, Failure Lessons, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

No Excuses

Admit it.  We have all done it.  We have made excuses for not achieving something we set out to accomplish.  It’s easy to do, and if you do it once it can quickly become an unfortunate habit.

Why do we make excuses about our failures?  Perhaps we told others about our plans for achievement and we are now embarrassed to say we did absolutely nothing or fell short of our goals when asked about our progress.  Did we have to save face?  Should we be making excuses for our own procrastination, lack of commitment, or laziness?  How could this possibly help, and why do we lie to ourselves about it?  More often than not, once we start making excuses there is a pretty good chance we will never achieve what we started out to accomplish.

I’m sure we have all found ourselves asking these questions from time to time (whether we can admit it or not).  But if we want to be high achievers we must take responsibility for our failure and lack of progress regardless of how it happened.  Achievers are honest about failure.  They accept it and learn from it.  They do not let themselves off the hook with worthless excuses when they do not accomplish their goals.  Achievers are accountable.  Rather than attempting to justify why they did not get there, high achievers focus instead on what they are going to do to change the situation and get back on track.

Next time you set a goal and do not get there, save your excuses and hold yourself accountable.  If you do, you’ll join the other high achievers who are turning their failures into great success.

 

Four Lessons I Have Learned from Failure Moments

Posted by John R. Stoiber on February 14, 2015
Posted in: Failure Lessons. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Four Lessons from Failure

When you experience failure, and you will, it is not the failure itself that ultimately matters. What matters most is what you learned from the failure, and what action you took to overcome it.

As I reflect back on my own failure moments, a number of lessons come to mind that will remain with me for a lifetime.  While failure is truly relative and situational, these lessons will apply to anyone that has failed.  They serve as helpful reminders that make us stronger and more capable of handling whatever setbacks come our way in the future.

Here are four failure lessons that I have found particularly helpful:

1. Strength of Will:  A moment of failure is one where one’s “will” is tested.  Does failing deflate your desire or drive to achieve something, or does it fuel your fire even more to work harder, commit more energy, and push towards a goal?  If you are like me, you choose the latter.  You use the experience as motivation, you strengthen your will to succeed.  You get stronger, and move on from the failure more swiftly.

2. Refined Discipline:  Achievement, regardless of how big the goal, takes discipline.  The ability to control your behavior when faced with a variety of unexpected influences or temptations is critical to success.  Each failure makes you reflect on your discipline and think about how it might be refined to avoid the possibility of future failure.  How can you better handle the curve balls that come your way during the process of success?  Failing teaches us to be more disciplined in that process by helping us to know what works and what does not work.

3. Courage Trumps Fear:  For most people, failure moments only amplify the overarching fear that people have of failing.  When failure happens, it is easy for the fear of failure to increase.  Take the safe route.  Don’t make a mistake or it will hurt.  However, the lesson we learn from failure is that the more courage we have to overcome it and move on the less fear can creep into our heads and hold us back.  Courage is the slayer of fear.  Courage allows us to regroup, prioritize what is next, and continue on our success journey without fear of a repeat failure.

4. True Relationships Are Revealed:  You might wonder why I have included this one as it relates to failure lessons.  But, this is a big one in my view. When you are experiencing great success, it seems that your relationships also tend to grow and you naturally attract more people into your own professional and personal network.  However, when the chips are down, your “true” relationships are revealed by those that stand with you. Where does your encouragement come from, and who is by your side to quickly offer support (and sometimes defense) related to the failure?  Where are your true relationships?  If you really think you have a good relationship with someone, and you feel a sense of trust with that person, what happens in moments of failure will clearly show you how real and meaningful that relationship really is.  Trust me, it is enlightening and I encourage you to reflect on this regarding past failures. We as humans rely heavily on our relationships to feed our strength of will, to build our courage, and to hold us accountable for maintaining our stated discipline.  Having true relationships around you can make all the difference in handling failure.

 

4 Ways to Control Your Fear of Failure

Posted by John R. Stoiber on November 8, 2014
Posted in: Achievement, Fear of Failure. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Stoiber - 4 Ways

Our own fear of failure is one of the strongest forces working against us when we are trying to achieve great things.  The fact is we all have fears.  You cannot avoid them.   However, you CAN control them.   Here are some ways that have worked well for myself and others I know:

1.  Always understand your alternatives:   Knowing what could happen when you set out to achieve something and planning ahead for the possibilities – both positive and negative – will make every move you make less scary.   Play things out from all angles and you will move with confidence knowing you have a plan if things do not go exactly as expected. There is more than one path to success, and sometimes you need to take a path that you didn’t expect.  Anticipate the alternative paths.  Plan for them.  This allows you to manage the fear of the unexpected.

2. Have a worst case scenario you can live with:  Think about and understand your worst case scenario.  For example, back in the late 1990’s when I was developing a high risk tech start-up, I used to tell myself (and my wife!) that the worst thing that could happen was I would need to go get a job.  I could live with that, and it kept me boldly moving forward.  Knowing you can live with the consequences of failure – at its worst – will also help to keep your fear in check.

3. Associate with people who also have control of their fear:  If you can hang around people who also have learned to control their fear, it will help you to put your own fear into perspective and improve your ability to control it. You really need to avoid negative thinkers and naysayers.  They only add to your fear.  Instead, hang around people who also believe in themselves and are working on their own paths to success.  Knowing you are not alone will also give you the confidence to control your fear.

4. School yourself: If you are afraid of something, learn about it. Most of our fear comes from the fear of the unknown.  The more we can study what we’re afraid of, the less we will fear it.  Try this with anything you fear.  It really works. For example, if you are afraid of starting a new business, talk with entrepreneurs and study lessons from those who have been successful doing what you want to do.  That knowledge breeds confidence, and confidence lowers your fear.

Take the Downside Out of Play

Posted by John R. Stoiber on November 1, 2014
Posted in: Achievement, Fear of Failure. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Stoiber - Downside

If you want to increase your odds of success, one useful approach is to eliminate the biggest possibilities of failure. That is, take the downside out of play. Early in my career as a product design engineer, we worked hard to eliminate the largest possibilities of product failure in order to improve the potential reliability of new products.  The same is true for achievement.

First, always have options.

Do not bet everything on only one possibility.  For example, if you are looking for a job, do not focus only on a single opportunity.  Pursue many in parallel.  If one does not work out, you can still pursue the remaining options. If you put everything into only one opportunity then your failure point becomes very risky – it’s all or nothing.

Second, think before you start.

Sounds easy right?  Make sure you seek the right advice from other high achievers to avoid the same mistakes they may have made.  Then, think about your goal and work backwards.  Map out potential moves and explore different paths to get there.  Learn how you can adjust your path if you run into a roadblock along the way.  Having only one path increases the odds of overall failure.

Finally, manage the impact of certain mistakes.

You are certain to make some mistakes along the way.  So what?  You are trying to avoid the big one.  For example, if you ever watch a professional golfer evaluate a difficult shot, they almost always consider the implications of different misses and choose the shot that will avoid the big mistake.  You can manage the impact of your own mistakes by considering the possible mistakes you might make and working to minimize the potential of a big one along the way.  Take the downside out of play and you will maximize your potential upside.

 

Ted Talk: Why We Should Never Fear Failure

Posted by John R. Stoiber on October 28, 2014
Posted in: Achievement, Fear of Failure, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

I really enjoyed this TED talk from Regina Dugan, the former director of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).  Who says we cannot achieve great things if we can overcome the fear of failure?

Stop Listening to Other People

Posted by John R. Stoiber on October 25, 2014
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Stoiber - Do Not Listen

I firmly believe that to be successful you need to avoid one of the single most negative influences that can affect your progress – listening to other people. Many times those who have goals, dreams or aspirations to achieve great things share them with others they know.  Unfortunately, more often than not the opinions we get from others will be negative.

Why?

The reason is that most people are trapped in their own fear of failure.  That fear is an addiction and they want to make you a part of it.  Do not listen.  In fact, stop asking for the opinions of others unless you know that they have similar aspirations or are high achievers.  Entrepreneurs tend to be this type of person. They see opportunities everywhere and are rarely negative.  You need to choose carefully the people you talk to about what you hope to achieve.  When in doubt keep it to yourself.

Control Your Emotional Roller Coaster

Posted by John R. Stoiber on October 19, 2014
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Stoiber - Rollercoaster

One of the things I’ve noticed most about highly successful people is their ability to control their emotions despite their ups and downs.

Why does emotional control matter?

One might think that you should always celebrate your victories, and simply focus on not getting down when you fail.   However, I have found that you must control your emotions in both success AND failure.

In a previous post (http://bit.ly/KOFdelayedgratification) I introduced the concept of delayed gratification.  The same principle applies when controlling your emotions.   If you celebrate too much when good things happen to you, it tends to diminish your drive to continue to push towards your major goals.  It can also increase your short-term expectations of achieving a similar “high” and increase the pressure to repeat that feeling quickly.

If you instead get too down on yourself when facing a setback, it can easily erode your confidence and lead to procrastination, negative self-talk and even depression or feelings of hopelessness.

If we learn instead to control our emotions – never getting too high, and never getting too low – we build a sense of inner calmness that can dampen the roller coaster ride we experience every day.  We’ll build on our success without losing steam, and bounce back from failures without negative consequences.

Here are a few tips that have worked for me to control my emotions:

1. Separate yourself from the situation:   No matter what happens to you, think about it as though it happened to someone else and you were providing that person with advice on their own emotional control.  Then drink your own kool-aid.  This really works.

2. Stop and breathe:  It sounds simple, but when you sense your emotions are heating up you need to slow down.  Take a few minutes and breathe deeply and slowly. You will feel a calm develop and it will help you to temper your emotion.

3. Practice:   Ah yes.  Don’t expect to be good at emotional control without practice.  But, if you do practice you will see a big change in your overall success.

Rejection Can Define Your Future

Posted by John R. Stoiber on September 9, 2014
Posted in: Achievement, Fear of Failure. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Rejection

Here’s the reality.   In your life you will face rejection.   You might get cut from a team, dumped by a boyfriend or girlfriend, told you cannot be part of a group or club, lose a sale to your competition, or be turned down for a job. Rejection happens.   What now?

How you answer that question, through what you do next, says a lot about what you will be able to achieve in your future. In fact, it can define it.

I’ll share a brief story.   When I was in high school, there was a guy I knew who joined a group of other boys to form an intramural volleyball team.   He was athletic, but he had never played volleyball before. His team played several matches over the next few weeks, and they were decent, but not great.

One day he was sitting at his lunch table and one of his teammates approached him.   His teammate told him that they no longer wanted him on the team.   “You stink” were the words used.   The guy was very competitive and generally good at most sports, so this hurt in a big way.

However, he had a decision to make that could affect his entire attitude in the future.  He could believe what the teammate said and be depressed, or he could channel the negative experience into some serious motivation.   No surprise to those that knew him, he went with the latter and it shaped many things he would do in the future when faced with rejection.

In case you are wondering how it turned out, the guy went on to become an outside hitter on a AA volleyball team, played in four leagues per week, practiced and trained like a fiend, and joined a USA Volleyball traveling tournament team.   He pushed himself to get the most out of his ability and had a great time enjoying the game.

Those teammates that rejected him in high school never knew – and that’s the way he wanted it.   He didn’t focus on becoming a good player to show them they made a mistake.   Who cares?   He did it to prove to himself that he could channel that rejection into something positive. He has approached every future rejection the same way.

You will face rejection, and it can hurt. But if you want to achieve your goals, make the right decision about what to do next when it happens. That can truly shape your future.   By the way, that guy from the story… it was me.

Fail Like a Kid

Posted by John R. Stoiber on September 6, 2014
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Stoiber - Reckless Abandon

Why can’t we do things as adults like we played as kids – with reckless abandon?   If you watch kids closely, they are really amazing in terms of what they will do and what they will try. It’s as though they have no fear.   The idea of failure doesn’t seem to ever enter their minds.   Sure they fail, but they get right back up as though it never happened.

Somehow as we grow up we are taught to fear things.   We are told to be careful – a lot – and if we make mistakes we can often be punished, scolded, put on the bench, sent to our room, grounded…. you get the idea.   These consequences can breed fear… fear of doing things wrong… fear of failure.   Fear can lead to paralysis. How can we possibly achieve when the risk of failure and consequences is so high? We are taught to play it safe.

However, if we want to achieve great things, we need to take some lessons from our childhood and play with reckless abandon. We need to fail and get back up, like a kid.