A secret to success is to embrace failure.
As Michael Jordan put it: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
If you are taking shots, you are going to miss, it is merely a matter of whether you keep going for it.
In selling, it is said that 90% of sales happen after the fifth closing attempt, which means a successful salesperson is one who keeps asking for the order over and over and over and over and over and over again.
That’s hard to do, which is why less than 10% of salespeople, the ones who keep asking for the order, close the majority of sales.
As they say in selling: Timid salespeople have skinny kids!
The secret to persisting is how you “frame” failure.
Rather than seeing himself as having failed 10,000 times to invent the incandescent light bulb, Thomas Edison saw he had 10,000 learning experiences that kept him moving in the right direction.
Most people never reach that point.
They are unwilling to fail enough to succeed, and more likely, they fail by failing to even take their shot.
As hockey hall of famer Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
True champions keep taking their shot and that is why they succeed.
So, be willing to miss, learn from your experiences, and just keep taking shots.