Never Consider the Possibility of Failure
Success secret number twenty: never consider the possibility of failure.
The fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success in adult life. Note that it is not failure itself. Failure makes you stronger and more resilient and more determined. It's the fear of failure or the anticipation of failure that can paralyze you and hold you back from even trying to do the things you need to do to be a big success.
A young journalist once asked Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, how he could be more successful faster. Watson replied with these wonderful words, he said, “If you want to be successful faster, you must double your rate of failure.” Success lies on the far side of failure.
Dare to go forward. Self-made millionaires are not gamblers, but they're always willing to take calculated risks in the direction of their goals to achieve greater rewards. In fact, your attitude toward risk taking is probably the most important indicator of your readiness to become wealthy. Whenever you are faced with a risky situation, ask yourself this question: “What is the worst possible thing that could happen if I go ahead?” Then you should do as [NAME], the self-made oil billionaire said, and make sure that whatever it is, it doesn't happen.
The fact is that everyone is afraid of failure. Everyone is afraid of loss and poverty. Everyone's afraid of making a mistake and being set back. But self-made millionaires are those who consciously and deliberately face this fear and take action anyway. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.” If you do the thing you fear, the death of fear is certain.
When you act boldly, unseen forces will come to your aid. And every act of courage increases your courage and capacity for the future. Whenever you take action in a forward direction with no guarantees of success, your fears diminish and your courage and self-confidence increases. You eventually reach the point where you are not afraid of anything. You eventually reach the point where you become unstoppable.
Perhaps the best line from the move “Apollo 13” came from Eugene Kranz, head of space control at NASA, played by Ed Harris. When everyone was starting to think about losing the spacecraft and the astronauts, he pulled them all together by announcing in a loud voice that failure is not an option. Your job is to commit to becoming a self-made millionaire. Your job is to set specific goals for yourself, write them down, and work on them every day. And especially, you must continue to remind yourself in the face of all the problems and difficulties that you will experience that failure is not an option. This is the attitude that, more than anything else, will guarantee your long term success and will guarantee that you become a self-made millionaire.
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