Fail on your way to success

Life can be seen as a series of failures marked by high points – successes. What many don’t realize is that it follows that the higher the level of success you achieve in your life, the more failures you experience. And we have to have both the failures and the successes, because how else can we appreciate our success when it finally arrives.

Jack Canfield said in an interview that Chicken Soup For The Soul® (co-authored by Mark Victor Hansen) was rejected by 144 publishers.

“… no one wanted it. Everyone said it was a stupid title, that no one bought collections of stories, that there was no advantage, no sex, no violence. Why would anyone read it?”

His agent gave up after the first 33 rejections from New York editors.

“Sorry guys, I can’t sell it.”

Frankly, could you blame him? After all, he didn’t have the same personal investment in this product as Jack Canfield and his co-author Mark Victor Hansen.

But the “experts” were wrong.

Chicken Soup For The Soul® became an international bestseller and inspired an entire series of more than 100 Chicken Soup books with titles as obscure as Chicken Soup For The Scrapbooker’s Soul and Chicken Soup For The Pet Lover’s Soul Dog Food. Actually!

In the long run, the agent’s lack of staying power proved to be an advantage for Canfield and Hansen, as they were able to keep the agent’s 15% commission.

It takes a very special mindset to persevere seemingly against all odds: the mindset of a goal achiever, the mindset of a winner.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are not the only authors who have suffered repeated rejections for their literary endeavors. John Grisham’s A Time to Kill was also repeatedly rejected. A Time to Kill became a major film with a stellar cast that included Samuel L Jackson, Sandra Bullock, and Matthew McConaughey. Alex Haley’s Estate was rejected. However, the television serialization of Roots conquered the world. James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy was initially self-published. It was his clandestine success that made publishers sit up and take notice. Celestine’s prophecy is a testament to the power of viral marketing. It sold more than 100,000 copies within a few months of its first printing, mostly by word of mouth.

So you will see if you really believe in something, within reason of course, then follow it. Keep trying different combinations and approaches and until you find a way to make your idea, your dream come true.

I recently read about Corey Rudyl, the internet marketing guru who turned a $ 25 investment into more than $ 40,000,000 in online sales and helped thousands of people start their own internet businesses in the process. Corey died suddenly and tragically in a car accident last year. Corey loved car racing and he also loved the internet business. He was only 34 when he died and it is a testament to his tenacity, perseverance and vision that the company he founded, the Internet Marketing Center, continues to grow increasingly profitable under the leadership of his protégé, Derek Gehl.

Did Corey Rudyl make mistakes? Of course he did, but he didn’t see them as such. He had the foresight to recognize that every “failure” could become a great success if he simply applied the lessons he had learned from his mistakes.

Yet perhaps one of the most famous men who did not give up on repeated failures was Thomas Edison. When Napoleon Hill interviewed Edison, he joked that if he hadn’t found the secret to the incandescent lamp, he would be in the lab right now working on it instead of wasting time talking to him. Edison also said:

“I had to be successful because I finally ran out of things that wouldn’t work.”

Now we all benefit from Thomas Edison’s invention in a way that Edison himself may have found too numerous to contemplate. Or maybe I’m being presumptuous.

Walt Disney was another great visionary who never gave up. When it was discovered that he was buying thousands of acres of wetland in Florida, people thought he had lost his mind, but they did not have his vision. Walt Disney died before his dream could be fully realized.

Someone later told a Walt Disney associate that it was a shame he didn’t see their theme park in all its glory. The associate smiled and replied:

“Oh, he saw it.”

Perhaps Thomas Edison’s vision of how the incandescent light bulb would light up our lives was much more detailed and expansive than I give him credit for. Who am I to speak? As I work to eliminate my limiting beliefs, I don’t know if I would have had the power of perseverance to do 10,000 experiments.

I guess my point is that if you learn from your failures and keep striving to achieve your goals or dreams, you will achieve success because what you seek also seeks you. I’d like to leave you with this quote from Thoreau:

“If a person confidently moves in the direction of his dream and strives to live the life he has envisioned, he will meet unexpected success at ordinary hours.”

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