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Copyright 2009-2015 Donna Gunter
Being the goal-driven woman that I am, failure has rarely been
an option for me. In so many areas of my life, from deciding on
where to go to college to obtaining scholarships to pay for
college to determining what I wanted to do for a living and
where I wanted to live, achieving my vision and accomplishing my
goals has largely been a process of deciding to do it and then
actually doing it. My friends, on occasion, lovingly refer to me
as a control-freak and a workaholic because of my driven
determination to meet my goals at all costs.
It wasn't until I heard author Susan Ford Collins speak at the
2003 eWomenNetwork Conference in Dallas that I began to redefine
my notions of success and failure. She told a story of a great
failure in her life, and how she now thought of that event as
one of her life's successes because of the lessons she learned
along the way.
The reframing of this notion of failure and success caused me to
rethink an event in my life, my divorce in 1999, in an entirely
new light. For the first 3 years post-divorce, I constantly beat
myself up because the marriage didn't succeed. After all, I
didn't get married with the intent of getting divorced--this
thing was supposed to last forever. And, when I realized about 5
years into the marriage that it wasn't working for me, it took
another 4 years to find the courage to admit defeat and ask for
the divorce.
What I came to realize now in my post-divorce wisdom was that
had I not removed myself from the marriage, my life as I now
know it would be vastly different. More than likely I would
still be trying to please my now ex-spouse and staying in a job
that I hated to make him happy and be living in a part of the
country I no longer wanted to live in. Instead, I am now living
in a place I love, have created a business doing what I love and
doing it on my terms, and having much more fun than I've had in
a long while. However, despite this self-realization, I had
never connected the dots in terms of thinking of my failed
marriage as a successful life event for me. It was only through
this failure that I was able to create the success that I now
enjoy. Wow, what an eye-opening affirmation this was!
How can you turn business failures into successes? In 2003 I
chose to take on a major project as an add-on to my business,
and things just simply never jelled. Later than year, my
intuition switched into overdrive, valiantly trying to convince
me to dump this project, and I fought tooth and nail to ignore
it. My insistence at ignoring the message again had to do with
my definition of failure--I had worked hard at this project,
given it my best shot, and the results I was seeking weren't
happening, but I didn't want to admit defeat and just walk
away--I just needed to work harder! However, the reality that
this project was eating up all of my time and energy and causing
the rest of my business to suffer was a wake-up call. Despite
this realization, I continued to beat myself up about my lack of
success, until I finally just recognized that it wasn't a good
match for me, and that no matter how hard I tried, it was never
going to be a good match, and that I needed to just dump it and
walk away.
As usual, I beat myself up about this failure, until my business
coach asked me a key question. She wanted to know if I would
have worked this hard in my own business to create the contacts
I created for this project. I told her that I could have, but
the truth was that I probably wouldn't have worked this hard for
myself. She coached me to think of the successes I had created
with this project and how I could parlay this success in
forwarding my own business. With that piece in place, I was
ready to let go of the project. And, amazingly, I did.
What can you say "no" to, or stop doing, or seemingly "fail" at,
that will propel you to the next level of success? Your wise
self knows the answer to this question--it's just a matter of
you choosing to listen, and being able to see the success in a
seeming failure. Remember, there is some truth to the old adage,
"When one door closes, another opens."
About the author:
Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed
professionals make more profit in less time online. To sign up
for more FREE tips like these and claim your FREE ebook,
TurboCharge Your Productivity: 50 + Tools To Help You Automate
Your Business and Make More Profit in Less Time Online!, visit
her site at http://www.OnlineBizCoachingCompany.com .
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