Edison failed to invent the light bulb 2000 times.   It’s not failure until you stop.

“There is no failure, only Feedback” is probably the most important rule of them all.   It’s fundamental to a successful mindset.   No goal worthwhile will be achieved without resistance.   Or ‘momentary failure.’   

If you are more comfortable with the analogy of ‘losing the battle, win the war.”    Just like how we learned on an earlier presupposition, no person is inherently evil or wrong.    Not situation is ever just one thing.  So we want to look at every reaction as feedback.  It is a piece into a larger puzzle.   Whether the response is positive or negative – it’s just feedback of THIS moment.   It’s a snapshot of a place and time and situation.   It’s a puzzle piece into the bigger puzzle of a successful life.

If you can’t see the full puzzle – zoom out.   Or to use a NLP term, Chunk Up.   Chunk Up to a bigger picture view of this.   Ask “What is this an example of”?    What can be learned from this?

As fighting great Connor McGregor often says, “We win or we learn.”    Because he knows 1 lost fight isn’t failure.

It’s only failure if you stop toward the larger goal.

NLP teaches us that every time your work with or talk to someone, you should pay attention to their responses as feedback.   Not just what they say, how they say it.   Much of communication is unsaid.   It’s in the body language.   We hear that over 50% of communication is tone and body language.  Those studies came from people looking at NLP.   NLP brought the notion to the forefront for others to study.

One of my favorites ways to explain this concept is looking at your baby on the floor.    Imagine that first time your child is pulling themselves up to their feet, bracing themselves for their first steps.   Exactly how many times are you going to allow them to FAIL at walking before you say “Stop.   No.  You are no good.  Walking just isn’t for you.”    Answer!   How….many…..times?

Well, that is how many times you should attempt to reach your goals.   Everything along the path is feedback.   Crashing into a wall, is a sign that you haven’t found the door yet.   Step back (chunk up), look around, survey the situation in a bigger concept, and try  a new course of action.   Get more feedback.

Just keep moving forward!   Once you collect enough data points of what doesn’t work, you will find what does.   Try new things.  Fail.  Fail more.  Fail harder.   And keep trying new and harder problems, so that you fail more.   If you are not failing regularly, you are not pushing your life to try big enough or hard enough problems.