Prepare for Success and Manage Failure
by Gail Kasper, Author and Motivational Speaker
There are two things many people don’t seem quite prepared for: success and failure. When failure happens, it throws a big wrench into plans. People get completely rattled, even to the point of giving up. Dreams get derailed, and confidence drops. When success is achieved, people don’t always know how to handle it. Unprepared, they squander the opportunity.
I’ve experienced challenges with both success and failure. In Another Day Without A Cage, I share a story about spending two years, just about every minute, studying and helping a hockey team with the aim of being hired as a motivational speaker for them, only to have those dreams shattered abruptly by a coach who refused to let a woman talk to his team. It was a big failure and a huge blow. At that point I could have given up on working with sports teams … but fortunately, I didn’t. I learned a great deal from the experience, and these lessons propelled me to exciting new opportunities. My book also reveals other run-ins I’ve had with failure, a key element that led to my many successes. I grew to learn to first accept, then seize and wholly embrace success.
Now I want to share tips with you so that when success or failure come your way, you’ll be prepared, and you’ll know how to seize one and manage the other. Practice these tips regularly.
To manage failure:
1. Remember that you’re not alone – everyone fails at something, at some point, no exceptions.
2. Regard failure as nothing more than a learning tool, because that’s truly what it is.
3. Take the lessons you gained from this failure. Leaving feelings of disappointment or shame behind, boldly move forward with your plans and dreams.
4. Take action to re-align yourself with your goals and get back on track with life.
To prepare for and seize success:
1. Believe with everything you have that you ARE worthy of being successful.
2. View success as a series of stepping stones to the life you want. This will make achieving success much more appealing and desirable to you.
3. Equate success with positives in your life, and take it for what it truly is: a means to less stress, greater peace of mind, career fulfillment, happiness and a life of meaning.
4. Give yourself permission to enjoy any success that comes your way. You really do deserve it!
5. Keep moving forward. Once you’ve succeeded, don’t stop – keep going, keep pursuing your life dreams.
About Gail Kasper: Mid-1998, Gail Kasper started her business from a small one-bedroom apartment, in the middle of bankruptcy, with no money in the bank. Today, Gail is one of the nation’s leading speakers, author, Top 1% Club Mentor, a television host, advice columnist, Certified Fitness Trainer, Ms. Continental America 2008, and the creator of SAD-T™ (Systematic Attitude Development-Technique™). A former Contributing Editor to Success Magazine with the “Ask Gail” column and host of the “Ask Gail” segment on the Comcast morning show, Gail is the author of her self-help autobiography Another Day Without A Cage: My Breakthrough From Self-Imprisonment To Total Empowerment and the self-help parable Unstoppable: 6 Easy Steps To Achieve Your Goals. With national media appearances that include Inside Edition, The Today Show, FOX Business News, and Oprah and Friends, Gail has earned the ranking of an in-demand national media personality who has been the topic of discussion on Regis and Kelly. The current host of the Philadelphia Visitors Channel, she has also made numerous appearances on network affiliates that include ABC, FOX, CW11, Comcast, and CBS, where she co-hosted the Emmy award-winning America’s TVJobNetwork. www.gailkasper.com
Comment on Prepare for Success and Manage Failure by Gail Kasper from the Editor…
We go though life, so much of our life in comfort zones, never seeking risk thus avoiding any hope of success and seeming to risk no failure. We have become comfortable with our existence – but it is a numbing if not nauseating (to me) comfort that beings to envelop us – and we fail to remember that we are here to fight the good fight. The evidence of this is all around us, people are mugged while most just stand by and watch. When a car crash happens only a few stop to help – others see the event, but more like a spectator as they watch TV – they seem to be fascinated by it, but there is a mental “disconnect” that what has happened is, in fact,real. Success is what you have when you fight the good fight, and failure is not failure to achieve you goals – that is a learning experience. Failure is when you give up.
Gail is right – prepare for both, and fight the good fight.
