This is Why Failure Is Part of Your Success

When I look back, it's those mistakes, it's those failures that actually sharpen the knife. In this episode of Lessons for My Kids. I want to talk about mistakes. I want to talk about failures. Okay, Brianna, Brody. Future children I may not have yet. I start everyone, letting everyone kind of see in the back door of what we're doing. And then it's for you. So this is multipurpose. This is me giving back. These are the lessons I want you to take to your grave to give to your children. And they're ones I've been thinking about forever, for over 10 years now. I have hundreds of them. At this point, as I'm filming, I have hundreds of lessons I'm going to deliver. I'm going to do these videos week after week to the day my eyes close forever again. I was going to do them just for you and put them in a library you can access anytime you want to. But why not help other people? And that's why we're here. So for those of you watching from the outside, share this with your children, share this with your friends, share this with your family. But for me, this is the most intimate and personal videos that I've ever done because these are my children. These are my babies. Today I want to talk about mistakes. When I think about mistakes or failure, I think about you, Bri, my daughter. For those of you that don't know Bri, so many times when you make a mistake, or at least you perceive it as a mistake, which is probably just a lesson for you, I know that in the moment, you can handle it. But when you're alone at night and you're in your room, I know you again, you're 12. When I'm recording this, you get anxiety sometimes at night because you start thinking of the things you feel you did wrong or maybe upset somebody, or maybe you felt you were rude to somebody or you failed a test in school and you allow it to eat you up. I shouldn't say allow. You're 12 years old. You're figuring this out. By the time you're watching this, you probably have it handled. But this is for you. And this is for you, Brody. This is for future show. It's for anybody watching. I used to beat myself up so bad when it came to mistakes, especially when I couldn't read and I felt pathetic and I thought I was going to be left behind. My friends were going off to college and doing all these great things, and I was stuck in my little town, going to be working on cars and greasy, you Know, greasy fingernails and sucking paint fumes from working in a collision shop. And man, every time I did something wrong, I beat myself up bad. If I felt I offended somebody, even if I didn't, I would beat myself up bad. If I thought I made the wrong choice, I should have went this way instead of this way, I would beat myself up bad. But here's what I want you to know at this phase of my life. And it's hard to get this perspective until you're actually here. I'm 50 now. I can look back. I'll look back and be wiser and smarter. At 60 and 70 and 80 and 90 and 110, I got to go at least to 110. Maybe 115 is what I'm hoping. But here's the thing, kidding aside, when I look back, it's those mistakes. It's those failures that actually sharpen the knife. Listen, I know this is not mine. I didn't make it up. And you've probably heard it before, but the smoothest stone is in the roughest part of the stream. The most successful people I know, the happiest people I know are the ones that went through the hardest times, the ones that failed miserably. Most successful people have gone bankrupt or lost all their money at one point. Most people in really happy relationships, like your dad is right now, like I am right now at this time of my life, it took me screwing up and making really bad mistakes and failing miserably in past relationships and doing the wrong things and thinking I was right and being too stubborn and not growing as a human being. But at the phase I'm at now, those mistakes crafted the man I am today. The mistakes that I made as a child helped me translate and relate better to you now because I made those mistakes, I learned from them. I learned in relationships. I have a better relationship. I learned and went broke twice in my businesses and hopefully that never happens again because I learned from those mistakes. I made mistakes with friends and felt terrible about it. But I crafted this next level. It sharpened than knife. So in this video, I want to give you the lesson of don't beat yourself up about mistakes. Know that it's part of your journey. Know that failure is a part of success. It's not a byproduct. It's not something that could happen. It is a must. You must fail. So I was on a plane and someone left their magazine in the little compartment. I pull it out and it was an article about Sarah Blakely, the. The owner, creator of Spanx. And as I remember it, the person interviewing said, how did you get over the failures that you had previous to Spanx? Like so many people, you'd fail and give up. Like, oh, my God, I tried that business thing twice. It didn't work. It hurt, it stung. I lost my money. How'd you keep going? And she said, and I hope I have instilled this in you guys, my children. I hope I help the whole world see this, whoever watches this. But she said, growing up, my dad didn't make failure a bad thing. In fact, he made it bad if we didn't fail. She said very often, and this is how I remember the article, it could be a little different. Very often he would say, what did you fail at today when we were young, like, consistently through our whole child and through our entire childhood. And if she said nothing, he'd say, well, I guess you didn't push yourself enough today. So what does that mean? It means that she, her father realized and then gifted it to her, gave her the lesson that if you're not failing, if you're not getting cut from the varsity football team or baseball team, or getting rejected to be in the Marines, or being on SEAL team, or getting rejected for a job that's over your head, if you're not getting rejected, if you don't have some businesses fail, it means you're not pushing hard enough. You're living a complacent life. You're playing it safe. Listen, I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face, until I'm 100 at the end of our lives, guys, I promise, you're not going to look back and wish that you played it more safe. I promise. You're not going to say, thank God I did what everybody else did. Thank God I didn't step off the path. No, you're going to want a redo. You're going to want to start over. You're going to want a button that gets you back to where you could live life. So this lesson is not only to not beat yourself up when you fail, because realize it's a part of it. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it stings. Yes, you could feel bad. That's okay. Loathe in it for real, really short periods of time, and then get yourself. Let it pass through you and get yourself out of it. Secondly, realize that if you're not failing, then most likely you're not pushing yourself enough. And I'll say, whatever age you are watching this right now, if you're not failing if you're not failing in the areas that you want more, if you're not failing, if you want to be in great shape, if you're not failing with your fitness, if you're not pushing yourself too hard, if you want to make more money, but you're not failing in trying the business and trying the marketing and trying the sales and trying to do the workshops and trying to do all the different things, if you're not failing, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. If you're failing in your relationship, if you're not, if you're not having many failures in your relationship, then maybe you're just standing back and you're losing intimacy, you're losing passion because you're afraid. You just want to leave it calm. The hell with calm. Be transparent. Be open. Be okay with disagreeing, failing, or doing something wrong in the short period so you can learn from it. Grow and grow together and go up. So are you guys failing enough? Are you guys pushing enough? Are you guys learning from those mistakes so you don't regret them? And that's how we sharpen the knife. That's how the stone at the bottom of the river gets smooth from being worn. Working hard in the roughest part. You want that next level? Be ready for failure. You deserve it. You want that next level? Be ready for failure and be okay with it. It's part of the journey. Wait till you see the lesson I got prepared for you next. What's up? What's up? Hey, before you go, you need to watch these next few videos. They're absolute game changers. Hurry up and click right over here and watch them, and I'll see you there.