Well, I don't, I don't use the word failure or success.
I think those are illusions.
There is no failure.
The only way you label yourself having failure is having a rigid
fantasy about it's supposed to look like, you know? And,
and so I've,
women come to me in the Breakthrough Experience sometimes and they say,
'I failed three relationships.' I said, that's ridiculous.
I said, you had a relationship.
You had a fantasy about how it was supposed to look,
how long it was going to last and how it was supposed to be.
And that fantasy is now broken, as it's designed to be.
So you can get grounded.
You had a fantasy and you weren't in love with the individual,
you were in love with the frigging fantasy.
And the person left you because you weren't actually connecting to them.
You were trying to get them to match the fantasy.
And then when they didn't match it and they left, you thought you had a failure.
Your fantasy is the source of your assumption of failure. Now, the question is,
did you get a feedback? Did you learn something?
If you didn't learn anything and you still hold onto the fantasy and you think
you're a failure, you didn't learn anything.
But if you go back and you look at what happened and you go, okay,
the individual stays with me.
When I provide them more value than their options,
people make decisions based on what they believe will give him the greatest
advantage over disadvantage. So if they're leaving you,
it's because they're perceiving there's a greater advantage and a greater offer
somewhere else.
And they think that life would be more fulfilled being with somebody else or
vice versa. You're doing that. So in the process of doing that,
it's not a failure. It's a feedback.
It's a feedback to you to know the values,
the highest values of the individual that you're in relationship with and to
understand that they are a customer and that you have to meet the customer's
needs if you want them to have a longterm arrangement with you,
if that's what you want.
But if you compare them to a fantasy and punish them and try to change them,
they're not going to feel loved and appreciated for who they are.
And they're going to go find somebody that will do that. So you didn't fail.
You learned,
but if you hold onto the fantasy and then blame them and don't get the
realization,
then you're going to walk around with a fake fantasy that you thought was,
would be successful and a failure because it didn't match your fantasy.
But if you learn from it and you go, okay,
when you dated people and you didn't have this fantasy of marriage,
didn't have this fantasy of these things you just said, okay,
I'm going to date the person, see how it works.
And you grow from it and you learn. And if it doesn't work out, you don't think,
Oh,
it's a failure to see it's part of the journey of learning about relationships.
So the same thing in business, you have fantasies about things.
The fantasy could be that you think you know what the market needs and the
market doesn't need that.
And so you don't have a demand and then you have supply and you're pushing
things uphill, and then it crashes. And then you think you failed. No,
you learned like Edison that that pathway was not meeting people's needs,
and now you're going to refine it. and you're going to come back again.
You don't go and say, 'well, I'm a failure. So I'm going to give up.
I'm not going to try it again.' It's like a baby walking,
the baby walks and he falls down. He goes, 'Oh, I failed.
I'm not going to try again.' That's crazy. He gets up.
And he fumbles a few times, eventually learns how to walk.
And even if he learns how to walk, he'll probably fall occasionally.
And those are not failures. They're feedback.
The people that live in their executive center, in the forebrain,
when they live by priority, see things as feedback.
They don't see things as failure.
Keough used to run Coca Cola company who was on the Berkshire Hathaway board for
many years, said,
'I'm leery of the people that use the word success.' I don't use the word
success. My publisher did one time on one of my books. We fought about it,
because I think success is a misnomer. Success assumes you've arrived.
You've gotten something, you've done something.
I'd rather call myself a man on a mission.
Cause the second you think you're successful,
you're de-purposing and going to lower priority things because you think proudly
that you have arrived somewhere.
And if you're going into thinking you're a failure,
you actually repurpose and go back to priority again, high priorities again.
Sometimes the actual so-called feedback of not getting the fantasy and clearing
up what the fantasy is and getting grounded about what you really want is wiser.
And so those so-called downtimes that are challenging that humble you is exactly
what you need to prioritize and get clear and go out there and make sure you're
giving true service to people. So I don't label success and failure.
I think those things are misnomers. I think it's an amygdala response,
looking for pleasure and avoiding pain.
And it's looking for success and avoiding failure. I don't live in that world.
I live in the objective world of setting goals that are more grounded,
more realistic that have plans of action that are achieved.
And each of the feedbacks are just going to guide me towards that achievement.
What worked and what didn't? One of the questions you ask yourself every day;
What is it I would absolutely love to create in life? Okay. What is,
how do I get handsomely paid to do it?
Because if you're not doing something you love to do and get paid for it,
you're going to be having a Monday morning blues, Wednesday hump days.
Thank God is Friday's week frigging ends and you're going to be living in a job
that you're having to do to make money,
to then escape it and blow that money on breaks and vacations and
retirement, which is foolish. You do something you actually love to do.
Get handsomely paid to do it.
What are the highest priority action steps I can do today to make it happen?
What obstacles might I run into and how do I solve them in advance?
So I'm prepared with foresight.
So I'm not hit broadsided because of my fantasy that I'm assuming there's no
negatives, there's no challenges. That's delusional.
And then what worked and what didn't work today and how do I do it more
effectively and efficiently? And how did no matter what happened to me,
how is it helping me fulfill my mission?
I'd rather be a man on a mission and have meaning in life and have purpose in
life and be teleologic,
than I would be going after a one sided world of the fantasy of
success. The second you think you've got success,
you've got no place to go but down. But if you've got a mission,
you see both of them as feedback mechanisms.
You don't get attached to either one. If you get attached to success or failure,
it runs your life.
You get attached to a man on a mission or a woman on a mission,
doing something that's truly meaningful to you. You love what you're doing.
You don't think about it. And you don't even focus on,
you're grateful for your achievements,
but you don't get trapped in the labels of them being good or bad or right or
wrong or success or failure. Get focused.
The fantasy of success without failure is a fantasy. Get grounded.
Start going towards objectives. You go farther in life.
Otherwise you think you're some sort of failure in life.