Don’t worry about losing
Fear usually paralyses us. We fear that if we embark on a business of our choice, we will fail. We fear that, if we attempt to come up with an innovation, the market will not accept it. We are afraid of introducing our ideas because we think that others will laugh at us. We are not good enough to comment on issues of strategic importance. What we usually forget is that ‘you do not know what you can achieve until you try’.
Losing in life is part of the game. Losing gives one an opportunity to analyse the weaknesses you never comprehended in the first instance. Rarely do people succeed at the first attempt. Politicians are the best example in this regard. Most of them rise to the high office having failed several times in elections. Jeffrey Fox was right: “Don’t despair if you make a mistake.”
Here is a practical dimension. It is not the number of failed sales rings that ring the cash counter; it is the number of successful sales calls that makes money. One successful sale can save a company.
Any attempt that fails is good an attempt as well. Such are strikeouts in business and life. There is something that they tells you that you did something, that you called or visited a customer, that you tried working out an idea, that you did something with the potential to improve your life and your company. Simply put, there are never enough attempts and do not stop doing what you have to do until you get it done.’
Successful people have failed many times in life, only that it is their success that puts them in the limelight. They never got worried moment they lost in life. They concentrated on carrying on with their dreams and ideas. Their hearts have many scars of losing perfectly waxed with glittering success stories.
Be prepared to face rejection. The inventor of the television faced rejection in the infancy of the idea. The Wright brothers did not find it easy to come up with an aeroplane. William Kamkwamba was classified as mad by people that saw him working on a windmill. After all, who did he think he was? Just a son of an uneducated peasant with little education. You will surely face rejection in life. You will tender to provide goods and services and your tender will be rejected on the basis that you are new to the market. Don’t despair; all big companies you admire were, at one point in time, new to the market. They faced rejection until the market accepted them and they became big.
Great scorers in athletics are the best encouragers in life. It is not the number of shots you miss that counts, it is the number of shots that count. For those that are conversant with baseball, even the best hitters make outs twice as often as they get hits. Consider the world sports super stars. Little do we remember their misses, we remember and cherish the scores they made. Cristiano Ronaldo does not score every time but every score he makes counts. The same is true of Messi. Mike Tyson mesmerised the boxing world but he was not always landing each and every blow. There were times his blows missed. There were times he faced punishing uppercuts but all that could make him a heavyweight was only one sudden knockout blow that would see an opponent being at the mercy of the canvas. If you happen to watch videos pertaining to lives of successful people, it is their scores that dominate more than their failures. Life is all about being successful in life.
The moments you lose are the best education no one else can give you. There is no school that can teach you how to cope up with loss as opposed to practically encountering the loss. A loss gives you a practical insight, tests your emotional capability to withstand failure and soldier on. So, why are you worried about a lost opportunity? Try again, and again, and again, until you make it. Life is never easy and success is not for the faint hearted.
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