Failure Required

The Driving Force

Most success stories you hear now have one thing in common. A tragic event, a terrible upbringing, some kind of event that drives them to become what they are today. Through crisis, these individuals meet another version of themselves. Just like that, a new version of them is born.

What is it about these events or misfortunes that drives someone to become ultra successful? Debt, addiction, frugal childhood, whatever it is, why do they all seem to have something? Following a misfortune, individuals understand the feeling of being at the bottom. The driving force is to simply never be at the bottom again. There is motivation in the misfortune of your own life. However, if you think I’m gonna tell you to find misfortune, you’re dead wrong.

Why Wait?

The whole point of this entire website is to help others understand how failure is required for success. You will fail. Everyone has and everyone will. That is the standard. If you don’t fail then you haven’t tried hard enough. Listening to the ultra successful talk about their misfortunes, maybe you have recognized this pattern as I have. There is no motivation like being forced to dig yourself out a hole. But why wait for the hole to be dug?

It goes back to my previous post, “Walk a Mile, or Drive Two”, we are so content when things are good that we fail to be pushed to be great. We just stop at good. It’s the easiest thing to do. To sit back and relax when you’re making it work. All this is to say, why wait?

If you can recognize the pattern of the ultra successful misfortune stories, you can also recognize my next point. Get ahead of the misfortune. Don’t wait for rock bottom. Prevent the rock bottom. My motivation doesn’t come from having to crawl out of a hole I dug myself by overcharging a credit card I can’t pay off. My motivation comes from wanting to have so much wealth that it doesn’t matter if the card gets maxed out I will still have money in the bank. If I max out 10 credit cards we’re still okay. Why? Because I didn’t wait for the bottom. I moved the ceiling so high I don’t even know what the bottom looks like anymore.

Next Steps

I encourage you to imagine what your bottom would look like. If your life is pretty good, don’t accept this to be enough. Don’t get comfortable. Comfort kills growth. Without growth we go backwards. There is no such thing as staying exactly the same. If you aren’t going forward, you’re moving backwards. Allow yourself the motivation to not ever reach bottom. To drive so far forward that the bottom is no longer in sight.

Start today. Figure out what your dream life looks like. Go get it. It’s that simple.