How You Respond
Failure doesn’t consist in stumbling and falling. The failure is in staying there on the floor. Success is in finding something while you’re down there to pick up with you. After his butcher shop in Brooklyn was robbed four times in one month, William Levine bought a bulletproof vest in 1980. Other business proprietors asked him where they could get a vest like his. Mr. Levine began taking orders as a sideline. Today Levine is out of the butcher business and full-time president of Body Armor, International. He supplies forty sales representatives across the country and is selling five hundred to six hundred vests a month.
Free Choices
No one learns to make right decisions without being free to make wrong ones.
The Failure to Fear
You’ve failed many times, although you may not remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn’t you? Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat? Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot. R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on. English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books. Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but he also hit 714 home runs. Don’t worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try!
Handling Failure
The real legacy of my life was my biggest failure—that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation—being sent to prison—was the beginning of God’s greatest use of my life. He chose the one experience in which I could not glory for His glory. –Charles Colson
Profiting from Failure
A young man of thirty-two had been appointed president of the bank. He’d never dreamed he’d be president, much less at such a young age. So he approached the venerable chairman of the board and said, “You know, I’ve just been appointed president. I was wondering if you could give me some advice.” The old man came back with just two words: “Right decisions!” The young man had hoped for a bit more than this, so he said, “That’s really helpful, and I appreciate it, but can you be more specific? How do I make right decisions?” The wise old man simply responded, “Experience.” The young man said, “Well, that’s just the point of my being here. I don’t have the kind of experience I need. How do I get it?” Came the terse reply, “Wrong decisions!”
Fear of Failure
An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn’t work out, you had your head cut off.
Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining
The youngster brought home a report card heavy with poor grades. His mother asked, “What have you to say about this?” The boy replied, “One thing is for sure, you know I ain’t cheating!”
Real Insecurity
That’s finding on your new job that your name is written on the door in chalk—and there’s a wet sponge hanging next to it.