Success And Failure: The Path To Success Is Always Forward

Success and failure cannot be separated. Success may not come right away, and you may not fail in achieving your goals. Failure, however, will always be there because there is no such thing as success without failure. If we accept this truth, it would mean that every person who is successful is also a failure at some level. It's just a matter of how you perceive and approach failure.


Success and failure can never occur without going through some form of failures. Even if you succeed, the risk is still as high for you as for others who make mistakes. The key to success and failure, then, is more like a big, loose wheel that you keep spinning and then you spin it all the way around and end up back on top. For many people, this translates into "making mistakes" and "failure."

But what about the executives? Are they failures too? What do they learn from their own experiences in business? Many people believe that executives have these super natural abilities of reading body language, nagging questions from customers, and knowing instinctively what to say before giving their best impression. While these skills definitely help, much of what makes an executive successful is experience.

Most successful people, including most senior executives, have at least one major personal failure that thrusts them into action. In addition, most successful people know something or learn something from these experiences. They may not have all of the details, but they have insight into the critical path along which they have learned to move.

The key to success is in taking small actions to move forward, rather than trying to hold on to a desired outcome, even if you know that it is unlikely you will get back to where you started. You have to accept the fact that things are going to break your way. The most successful people know that things will get back to how they were, but they also prepare for the unexpected by doing whatever they need to do to get ahead of the curve. In addition, these successful people take action when they have been pushed backwards, and they get back up again.

The most successful people have a clear understanding of what is required to get back where they started, and they know how to push on despite setbacks. Unfortunately, many less successful people do not have this kind of clarity. Often, they are more concerned with avoiding failure than in actually achieving it. Their "grit" may be just enough to get them back to where they want to be, but it usually is not enough to get them back to where they want to go. Successful grit comes from experiences that force us to take action, and many people lack the fortitude to do what it takes to move forward.

One of the most important keys to success is having a thick skin. We can learn from our failures, and even the biggest successes do not mean anything if we allow them to stop us from doing what we want. Those who are willing to walk away and look at their failures without dwelling on them are more likely to have staying power in themselves than the person who thinks about every situation holistically and makes mistakes that are a part of life. Those who allow setbacks to paralyze them will only set themselves up for failure.


Those who are willing to take the time to understand what causes failures and how to prevent them from happening in the future learn far more about themselves than those who are content to sit back and let others shoulder the burden. Successful senior executives understand that there are always lessons to be learned from past failures. They use these lessons to help them set and keep goals, to motivate them and to remind them what they have already achieved. Most importantly, successful senior executives realize that the sooner they learn from their past failures, the sooner they can move on to achieve even greater success. Failure is something that is not so easily avoided but can, with patience, be overcome.