How is it that the most successful people have gotten to where they are? Is it because they’re smarter or more talented than we are? Do they experience success because they have more money? Maybe it’s because they’re better looking or they’re just plain lucky?  The stars always seem to line up for them?

I would suggest that the answer to that is a resounding NO! History has hundreds of thousands of examples of how people and organizations have overcome one or all of those examples to lead very productive and highly effective lives.

If you look at your most successful professional athletes, sales professionals, CEOs, students, politicians or even parents, there are a couple things that they share in common:

1. They know what they want and understand the price that must be paid to accomplish it. Vince Lombardi was quoted as saying “Once you agree upon the price you must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, …and the temporary failures.”

2. They simply fail more times than anyone else. And they’re okay with it.

Anyone who has achieved great successes in life has also experienced countless failures and setbacks on the way to their eventual success.  Here are some famous examples:

– Thomas Edison’s experiments failed approximately 10,000 times before he invented the working light bulb.
– Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company went bankrupt five times before he finally succeeded in the auto industry
– John Grisham is one of 21st centuries most accomplished authors. 16 agents and 12 publishing houses rejected his first novel, A Time to Kill, before being picked up.
– Brett Favre is the career leader in interceptions thrown. He is also the leader in touchdowns, passing yards, completions & wins as a quarterback.

Besides obvious talents in certain areas none of these people are any different than we are. I will repeat that again. None of them are any different than we are. The sooner you buy into and embrace this fact the quicker you will begin seeing your own level of successes.

Three things you can do now to move from a setback to success:

1. Know what you want.  Clearly decide what you’d like to be, do and  have.  I would highly recommend the book,  The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield.  It is one of Freedom Personal Development’s favorite books on success.

2. Write two or three personal setbacks to success stories.  This reminds you that you can accomplish many things when you put your mind to it. You have proof from past experiences.

3. Be prepared to fail.  There are two certainties of Failure: 1)  It’s guaranteed 2) It is essential to growth

Learn to look at failure as a positive, not a negative.  The faster you can fail and learn from your mistakes, the faster you will succeed.

If you’ll do those three things you will be well on your way to experiencing the kind of success that you so richly deserve. I will close by sharing a quote I heard from one of my mentors, Zig Ziglar:

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly…….at first”

Go Forth and Fail and love the journey.