Think about the people you admire most. Seriously, take a minute to think about who will be on this list. At least for me, these people demonstrate a group characteristic that I would like to have in the super version of me. They behave in a way that I would like to replicate in the most perfect version of myself.
Whether it’s dedicating your life to the craft you love, the ability to outwork others, or having an endless supply of love, these are some of the characteristics that I would try to demonstrate. Your list is most likely different than mine. The thing we do have in common is the people we admire experienced failures on the way to get where they are today.
Here is a small sports themed list of people I admire and their failure points. I think it’s a good exercise for you to do some thinking on where the people you admired failed.
- LeBron James – Lost his first 2 NBA Finals appearances, but will still go down as one of the greatest basketball players of all time
- Bill Simmons – Fired from ESPN and then created The Ringer which he sold for $200M to Spotify
- Phil Knight – He lost only banking relationship due to the lack cash Nike had on hand, just to create on of the most successful companies of all time 40 years later
Try to put yourself in the shoes of the people that you admired at the time of their failures. In that moment, what do you think was going through their head? In the case of Phil Knight and Nike, he lost his banking relationship. This was during a time that you banked with the people who were in your town. The other bank in Portland already turned him down, so he had no where to go.
In that moment, how do you think he was feeling? His company was potentially on the line because the only thing keeping them afloat was borrowing money, which just got taken away from him. He had no idea what Nike was going to be 40 years in the future. He had a major problem in front of him that he needed to solve.
All that to be said, there are points along everyone’s journey where their future doesn’t look so bright. Everyone can look back after the fact and say how much they learned from those moments, but they are scary in the present.
Next time you are at a crossroads, remember that life makes a little more sense when you look back and connect the dots. Hopefully that can help in the moments of failure because everyone has them. The most successful people fail and fail often because they are trying to push the world forward.
Peace and Love.