lifeskills

Failure is fine

Gaps are fine...you\'re not expected to be perfect straight away (photo by bosela)

We don’t want to fail, but when we do, we have a couple of choices:

  1. The winners choose to engage with failure and use it to do better next time.
  2. The losers walk away, deflated.  Future attempts either don’t happen at all, or are focused on the thought that they are likely to fail.

You may think that it failed once before, so it’s likely to go wrong again.  Rubbish!  If it failed once, you’ve had an experience of the situation to make you stronger for the future.

This is a common trait in successful people.  They bounce back, no matter how hard the fall, no matter how harsh the setback.  Because they know it takes time to get through.  None of us are perfect, so why do so many of us expect to achieve perfection from the outset?

Initial perfection can be summed up as one thing:

LUCKY!

If you get all you want after a single attempt, you’re lucky.  That luck may stem from stumbling upon something and being in the right place at the right time, or it might come from a combination of situations that you will never understand and never be able to emulate.

In other words, NEVER FEAR FAILURE.  It’s normal, it’s to be expected, and it’s healthy.

Investing in failure helps confidence to build.  Instead of seeing 9 fails out of 10, we should concentrate on the 1 success out of 10 that brings in what we need.

Most of us have the sense to stop when something is taking too much time to be worth continuing with, but we’re not yet all equiped with the sense to carry on when there’s still time to reach our goal.

Don’t give up after failure.  With each fail, you’re one step closer to success.

Ignore clutter at your peril

old_things

An untidy environment may appear fine to you on an everyday level, but you may not realise that it likely gets in the way of further development.

Cleaning that mess out of the way could notch you up to a higher gear and take you into a more confident realm. Even if you don’t care about mess, or if you think you have an ‘ordered mess’, the mental difference is shocking.

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7 things I’ve learned now I’m a Dad

Yes, so I have a son.

While you rarely see many mums and dads on a university campus in the UK, it’s apparently quite a common sight in Iceland:

“…in Iceland, even at the business-oriented Reykjavik University, it is not only common to see pregnant girls in the student cafeteria, you see them breast-feeding, too. ‘You extend your studies by a year, so what?’ said Oddny. ‘No way do you think when you have a kid at 22, “Oh my God, my life is over!” Definitely not! It is considered stupid here to wait till 38 to have a child. We think it’s healthy to have lots of kids. All babies are welcome.'” – From The Observer Magazine, May 18th 2008

Anyway, I wanted to impart some of my findings over the last couple of weeks in which I have been a father.

It’s funny how much goodness you can take away from a tiny little human being that isn’t able to do much yet:

Row Toes

1. Focus Focus Focus – A baby doesn’t know what is going on when it is first born. The child could hit itself on the head with their arm, but they haven’t got any concept that it was their own arm. Or their head, for that matter.

Yet despite this lack of self, babies love to look around and see the bold shapes around them, the light and dark. They like to hear new noises, as well as familiar ones, like Mum’s voice.

Babies focus so intently that they put us adults to shame. All a newborn can see is a haze of shapes, simple colours and light. It’s a confusion of newness. Yet they take every last drop of information in with such deliberate regard that it should make every one of us consider just how much we are focusing on our goals ourselves.

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5 Qualities to Successful Leadership Through NOT Leading

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed those people in life who seem to achieve whatever they like with total ease and confidence.  It’s as if they were born leaders.

When you watch someone like this in action, it’s clear that they don’t need to boss people around, they don’t need to labour the point, and they don’t show desperation in trying to persuade others.  It just comes naturally.

What’s so striking about these individuals, however, is their approach to leadership.  A successful leader DOES NOT act like a leader.  Their success can be attributed to an open and friendly approach.

Follow the leader... (photo by Marloes*)

Others feel truly valued and respected, which encourages them to follow.  Leading is not about managing others; instead, leading opens up the possibilities for all involved.

Five common qualities of leaders stand out in particular.  As you’ll see, they look outward to the wants and needs of others, rather than inwardly to their own, private goals.  Yet through this approach, a leader can achieve their private goals with an enviable ease.

With these five qualities, you could be on the way to greater achievement too.  They are:

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