“It may be impossible,” he said.
“Maybe I’ll fail worse than I already have,” he continued with fire in his eyes.
“But I’ve just gotta know I did everything I could, Geoff.”
That was enough for me.
“I’m in,” I said.
Go for it!
This was about 10 months ago.
For 5+ years he’d been trying to start his own company.
Fits and starts he made a ton of progress and then like that kids game snakes and ladders he’d slide back down to where he started.
He tried and failed over and over but refused to quit.
As he said to me, “I’ve gotta go for it!”
Failing…
In the realm of doing hard things is this extra special type of hard thing, failing.
I don’t know if you’ve ever failed at anything meaningful but it can be devastating.
Especially for high achieving people who got top grades in school and a top job and always outperformed at everything taking on something too hard for you can be brain-busting.
Coz, and I’m speaking from experience here, giving it your best and failing to achieve results you want over and over doesn’t just feel bad but can chip away at your belief in what’s possible for you.
Good, winning takes humbling.
Winning
A most enlightening Principle for me in the method I built from studying Musk and Bezos is Principle 7 Use Failure.
Like the image you see above what’s so powerful in this Principle is seeing how Musk and Bezos didn’t just accept failure or embrace it or do it anyways, etc.
They Use Failure.
So instead of seeing failure and success as two arrows pointing in opposite directions you see failure and success pointing the same way.
It seems obvious when you look this way seeing failure as feedback because it’s like a baby learning to walk every time you fall down using that failure to get back up and keep walking.
Victory!
Well… after years of walking it forward, this week my client had a huge victory!
No one’s popping champagne yet as he’s still got a long way to go before we celebrate winning.
But it’s good to celebrate small victories especially when they’ve been this hard fought.
It’s been 5+ years in the making. He’s been working this deal for 7 months!
And I’ve seen just to make it this far how much he’s done.
How much?
In our former business with Navy SEALs I often think about what one operator said when asked what makes the difference between those who finish grueling SEAL training and those who quit.
“Maybe they didn’t want it enough,” he said.
It was a flippant response and no disrespect to all the hardcore people who quit, it was just his observation on what it takes to achieve hardcore things.
You’ve gotta really want it.
So much you’ll never stop finding ways to win.
Not possible?
How do you know if something is not possible?
Unless you’ve tried every possible way you only know the limits of the ways you’ve tried.
As Thomas Edison said, he didn’t fail 10,000 times inventing the light bulb, he found 10,000 ways that weren’t possible!
And that’s the thing we’re really talking about here, isn’t it?
What you will make possible.
I’m possible
With will you find a way.
This has been a profound reminder for me over and over again.
Not just in my lifetime or in decades of this work or even seeing it with clients achieving extraordinary things.
It’s law of the land even the most seemingly impossible things are possible when you never quit finding a way to win.
With this it’s all possible.