Are you learning, improving? Sometimes, a specific situation may not be a huge success but the increased knowledge or skills you’re developing are worth the effort.
What is your “opportunity cost?” What could you be doing with your life, your time, your money, instead? Are you passing up other chances to succeed by sticking with this?
What effect is this situation having on you, your family, and friends? You may be willing to forge ahead but at what price to your own and others’ well-being? Are you really doing others a favor by keeping them connected to a declining situation, or could they move on to other opportunities as well?
Finally, take a good hard look in the mirror and ask yourself whether there’s truly a reasonable chance, not just a last-ditch hope, that things are going to get better. Can you ever get things to work or are you just avoiding change? Sometimes it’s time to make the tough choice, hard as it is, to get out.
There’s an old Bulgarian proverb that says, “If you wish to drown, don’t torture yourself in shallow water.” I hope I’ve finally learned, when I’m in a doomed situation, to at least give it a quick death. And then I can face the future bravely and move on.
Change Takes Time
I once saw a handwritten note over a jar for tips: “If you fear change, leave it here.”
We all fear change. Yet we all want to change—our habits, our appearance, our income. Most of us want others to change—our spouses, our children, our employees. Sometimes, no matter how much we want change, no matter how hard we try, we just can’t seem to make it work.
One problem is that we want change to happen overnight. We go on extreme diets or change business direction suddenly. We want to be able to push a button—like a Star Trek transporter—and immediately get from one place in our life to another: “Beam me up, Scotty.”
Change is a process, not an immediate outcome, a journey rather than a destination. The most difficult stage of change is when you’ve come part way but haven’t left old ways entirely behind. Experts say it takes at least a year for a change to become a habit. So be patient with yourself and others. Change takes time.
When you plan on making a change—or want a change to happen in others—recognize that you’ll go through stages:
1. Contemplate. You start thinking about your goals, but they still seem unachievable.
2. Reframe. You start saying, “This is going to happen; I can make this work.”
3. Plan. You convert desires into specific, realistic actions you can take.
4. Commit. You make a real commitment to your goals and plans.
5. Try and fail. You begin to make changes but you’re inconsistent; you fall back into old patterns.
6. Recommit. You remind yourself of your goals, your plan, and your belief that you are capable of success. You start again.
7. Habit. You consistently change your behavior.
Turning Failure into Success
I’m often asked by business students, “What’s the key to being a successful entrepreneur?”
I have a clear, but surprising, answer: “Change how you think about failure.”
In business, the stress is always on success. Seminars promote “Small Business Success.” Magazines run stories on “Secrets of Success.” Even I’m guilty—my first book was titled The Successful Business Plan.
Failure is the “F word” of business—it’s not polite to mention it. After all, failure is what happens to other people, right? But what about when we fail? We either try to forget the experience quickly, or we wallow in self-doubt and recrimination.
But if you’re in business, sooner or later, you’re going to have failures. I certainly have. I’ve had big deals that have fallen apart, partnerships end, even a business I needed to close. But sometimes, these “failures” have turned out to be fortunate; they’ve forced me to re-examine my goals, decisions, methods. Then, I’ve been able to choose to take a different—better—path.
I’m not alone. Most successful people (there’s that word “success” again) will tell you that some of the most important, most beneficial, events in their lives were things they viewed as “failures” at the time. But they used their failures to learn new attitudes and skills, to move on to new opportunities, and to get perspective on their lives.
Failure does not lie in an event itself; it lies in how we see that event, and what is learned from it.
Of course, some failures have a major economic impact on your life, such as bankruptcies or divorces. But even these significant, very painful, events can be seen as a chance to start on a new path, over time.
Here’s how the best entrepreneurs deal with failure:
