Failing Enough To Win

There are a few good reasons for not taking personal initiative, but we often seem to find a number of bad reasons. The worst perhaps, is the fear of failure. It is the worst because most of the time you must fail enough to win.

Consider: You start playing baseball as a kid, you go to bat and ten times at bat, seven are outs. You keep this up. You pop up, you strike out, you dribble the ball to the pitcher, seven of ten times. Yet you persevere. You keep failing 70 percent of the time. You are out of called strikes, easy fly balls to left field, topped balls to the shortstop.

You keep up this spectacular failure rate until one day you are twenty-five years old and you would be totally disgusted with yourself, except a professional team just offered you a contract for a few million dollars a year

They did this because while you have been maintaining your extraordinary failure rate, you have been batting .300 and professional baseball teams pat a lot of money for failing this often. Look it up. They care about hits. To get 150 hits, you must be willing to fail 350 times.

Unless you are willing to do this, you don't get any of the hits. When your turn at bat comes, you must be willing to step up to the plate and strike out in order to hit consistently. This never changes. To win anything, you must go to bat, and you must be willing to get egg all-over your face a good deal of the time. That's just the way it is.

Two out of every three new business venture fail. So, nobody should risk starting a new business? Nobody should invent anything? Ninety-seven percent, or more, of direct advertising results in absolutely nothing. However, you'll notice that your mailbox hasn't gotten any emptier during the past few years. A lot of businesses are thriving on the three percent or less that might result in a sale.

Any teacher knows that only a small minority of students listen or care about what he or she is teaching, but that teacher lives for the few that will be inspired

When you fail, you are in great company. Literally.

Hey you only live once. So fail enough to know that you are alive. Fail away and make something happen. Take the initiative with your life and so something important. Make sure you fail enough to win.

The key here is the "enough." Never bat just once. There is too much at stake. Make sure you get to bat 500 times. Insure your 350 outs to get your 150 hits.

The world is littered with the potential of good folks who are afraid to bat. It's a tragedy. We could use the hits..

Heck, it's the runs batted in, not the strikeouts, that you'll remember anyway.