THERE IS A SUCCESS PROCESS.  It’s as simple as 2 plus 2 equals 4. Utilize consistent Action and be willing to Risk Failure!  

Without the willingness to risk failure, nothing happens… Without it, Success is simply IMPOSSIBLE!.   If you aren’t failing, you’re not really trying.  And if you’re not failing enough… you aren’t trying hard enough. 
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In fact, it has been said, and I believe, accurately: “You can often estimate the size of a man’s success by looking at the size and number of his failures”. No one EVER hit a home run by NOT swinging the bat!   No one ever threw a touchdown by punting! 
So many of us live lives of mediocrity, not because we don’t have talent, but because we are unwilling to risk failure. 

As Steve Jobs once said:  … you’ve gotta be willing to act…. And you’ve got to be willing to fail, you’ve got to be willing to crash and burn.  If you are afraid of failing, you won’t get very far”.

How many touch downs have you  not thrown because you chose to punt; took the easy way out instead of a more difficult path to glory?  How many of us never hit that home run, not because we couldn’t, but because we were afraid to swing the bat? 

Were we afraid to fail?  Were we too concerned about being embarrassed?  Did we wonder what people would think if we swung and missed?   We have to get rid of that fear.  If you try, sometimes you are going to miss!  You are!… I’ve missed… and more than likely, I’m going to miss again!   But I won’t stop swinging!  And neither should you!

 Isn’t it better to try and temporarily fail, than to never try and never succeed at all?  Avoiding failure by never trying is simply a sure way to mediocrity.   If you want to succeed in anything, you must be willing to take a chance, make the attempt and accept the possibility of failure.  Each of us will occasionally fail.  And that’s nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of.   Embrace it.  Learn from it… then swing again!

Success and failure, go hand in hand.  Remember, everyone who has ever succeeded has also failed… and in most cases, they failed many times, sometimes spectacularly!   But when they failed, they pulled themselves up, analyzed what happened and tried again; but this time, they did it with an increased knowledge of their endeavor.  This time they had new and better information so a better chance of success on that next attempt.
Virtually everything worthwhile starts with Failure.

• We learned to walk but first we fell.
• We learned to ride a bike, but first we fell,
• We learned to write, but in the beginning we made mistakes in spelling and grammar, and most of us still do…
• But the more we do, the more we try, the more mistakes we make…  the better we get.  Doing and failing is always the path to improvement and greater achievement, in anything.

That fact is, failure is at the foundation of almost every great success.

 That’s simply how the world works.

• We do…
• we fail,
• we learn,
• we do it again,
• we succeed!

That’s life… Get Used to It!  Understand it and embrace it!
 The worst thing anyone can do, is to spend their life trying to avoid failure.
Remember, without the willingness to try and fail… you wouldn’t even be walking…  or even talking for that matter. 
That’s how it is in every aspect of life and business.

Failure is an inevitable stepping stone to achievement.  Don’t ever forget it.  Internalize it, make it a part of you… because, if you spend your life trying to avoid failure… rather than achieving success… You are doomed! 

Focus on what you have to do and where you want to go… But don’t worry that you might fail.  Just do it!  Don’t wait until everything is just perfect, it never will be.  Don’t analyze the project, over and over and over until you know that you can’t fail… That time will never come! 

 Remember, No worthwhile journey ever consists solely, of green lights.

This isn’t to say that you don’t need a plan, information and a reasonable degree of confidence in the outcome.   What it DOES mean is that if you wait until you are certain you can’t fail… you will never start!  The only guaranteed result of that strategy is…  

• Either the opportunity will be “stolen” by someone else…
• or you will be waiting ‘til the end of time.  

Even if success isn’t certain, you have to try.  You have to be willing to risk failure.  Success and failure are flip sides of the same coin… but until you actually flip the coin…  you don’t get either.  

What If you try and fail?  So What!   Failure is how we learn!
If you are human, you’ve failed in the past….  Guess what… will again.
If you Act, occasionally you fail. You might even fail a lot.  But it doesn’t matter.

Failure is never THE problem.  It only becomes a problem depending on how you react.
Do you let it destroy your confidence and ambition?
Or do you learn from it…  get back up… dust yourself off and try again.

That’s how you learned to walk… it’s also how you learn to succeed.

Thomas Edison literally “failed” over 10,000 times in the creation of the light bulb. But he had the right attitude. When he was once asked by a reporter about his incredible number of failures, he said,  “Young man, I know you are young and do not yet know the ways of the world.  But I want you to know… I have not failed 10,000 times. I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that it will not work!“ 

Thomas Edison wasn’t afraid of failing…  He learned from each and every one of them, then did it again, only better.  He followed the process.

He NEVER considered his failures to be a bad thing.  They were simply opportunities to learn and improve.  They were nothing but stepping stones to his eventual success.  But first, as uncomfortable as they may have been, his successes always began with his willingness to fail and his unwavering determination to take those steps!

 I can’t say this enough… YOU ARE GOING TO Occasionally FAIL…  DEAL WITH IT!
When you experience a setback, don’t take it personally.  Don’t let it shake your confidence in your abilities or plans.  Remember, the most successful people in history have failed… Often spectacularly…. 

Thomas Edison,
Michael Jordan,
Oprah Winfrey,
Steve Jobs… the list goes on and on.

Think about it, what did this assortment of the most successful people in history do after they failed?  What do they ALL have in common?
They ignored the failures, the opinions of others… Then got up and did it again…

Realize, no matter what you do, and no matter how well you do it… it is a simple fact of life, occasionally, things will go wrong. A deal will fall apart. The sale won’t be made. The race will be lost. You’ll forget your lines. Even if you do everything just right, something out of your control will cause things to go south!  That’s life, get used to it.  

WHEN YOU FAIL, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?…
When it happens, how you react will be infinitely more important than the fact of the failure or setback itself.  After having done everything right and still falling shore, many people simply fold.  They are so distraught, they quit trying, they get out of the business; they start finding fault with everything.  They shut down their aspirations without understanding that setbacks are just an unavoidable part of the achievement game.  They give up.  They stop trying.  THAT IS TRUE FAILURE!  Don’t be one of them.  If you give up… you are done!

Most people just don’t realize that failure is simply the natural order of things; that failure is an unavoidable, undeniably essential part of the success process.   To succeed, we must participate in the process.

Don’t ever let it happen to you.  Don’t ever allow a temporary setback become a permanent failure…  Learn from it and Do It Again!

 Don’t ever forget that our setbacks are always opportunities to learn and improve.  With every improvement, we increase our chances of success at the next attempt.  But to learn from our setbacks, we have to be willing to experience them in the first place.  In other words, try… and regardless of the result.  The move to the next step in the process… 

• If you succeed great!  Analyze what you did right, learn to do it even better.  Then move on to even greater accomplishments!
• If you fail, analyze the failure, learn from it, get back up and do it again, but better. 

It doesn’t matter… Whether you succeed or fail, it’s the seed, the beginning of a future accomplishment.

Don’t ever be afraid of failure, it’s part of the process.   If you avoid the possibility of failure, you are limiting your possibilities of real success…

FIND YOUR LIMITS THEN PUSH PAST THEM!
Like learning to walk, success comes from pushing yourself to and past your current limits, failing, falling, learning, getting better and then going beyond what was previously possible. 

For each of us, our lives unfold in the same way. 
First, we could do nothing but lay helplessly on our backs…
   Then we rolled over…
   Then we crawled,
   Then we walked,
   Then we ran…
But each step in that process required attempts and failures.   Failure was always the precursor to the next level of success.  

            WHETHER LEARNING TO WALK OR LEARNING TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS… IT’S ALL THE SAME!
If we wish to accomplish anything, we have to participate in the success process.  To accomplish anything of value; part of that process is almost always failure.    We participate in the process or we don’t.  It’s a choice.  Our choice… Your choice, but choices always have consequences.  

We can choose to rise up and occasionally fall,  learn and get back up to rise again; but even higher… or we can choose to quit, stagnate and remain mired in mediocrity. 

The choice is yours.  Choose success and accomplishment.  Don’t shy away from the possibility of failure… Try!   Do your best.  When you experience the inevitable failure, accept it… allow it mold you, teach you, strengthen you and help you to grow to heights you may never have imagined possible.

The last thing that I want to say… is you can do it.  I don’t know what your goal is, what your back ground is, what your educations is… but I DO KNOW success is within you. 

Whatever your goal may be, you can find a way to succeed.  You can…   But you have to be willing to participate in the process, be willing to try… and be willing to fail.   

Never forget, the most important factor in the life you live, is always YOU.  It’s not the business, the profession or the company.  In every business, in every company or industry there are people at the top and people at the bottom.  Some succeed, some fail.  It’s not the company that matters… it’s the individual.  The actions they take and the choices they make.  

The determining factor of your life, will ALWAYS, be you.  It’s the attitude you carry.  The willingness to push forward, to try again in spite of the failures and setbacks you will experience.

Where you are today is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is where you want to go, and what you are willing to do to get there. 

This is Bruce Castro wishing you all the best!

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