The little bit of success I have achieved has been
proceeded by mountains of failure, and a whole lot of adversity. It is a damn good thing I am so
stubborn.
I always get a kick out of meeting people who assume
that things must come easy to me. If they only knew, if they only knew
that I was fired from Baskin Robbins and Dairy Queen in the same year (no big
deal), or how I barely graduated from Cibola High School in Yuma Arizona. I was also performance dropped from SEAL
training on my first try because my preparation actually involved training to
the bare minimum, and I was much more worried about myself, than of my
classmates. There was also the time that
I failed to qualify for sniper school on my first try because I could not
qualify expert with iron sights on my M4.
Have I made my point? Or should I continue to tell you about the first
possible investor I sat down with to pitch my new business Bottle Breacher? How did that one go again…Oh yeah… it was a
complete disaster! He had so many
questions that I could not answer, the ones I did answer, he did not like. I think you get the point. Unless you are
Charlie Sheen and are WINNING all day, every day; regardless of the situation,
the rest of us do a lot of learning the hard way.
I do not like failure any more than the next person
does, but I have learned a lot through failure. It is where you will find the
most valuable lessons. Do you know what every one of my failures has in common? I deserved each one of them. Man that is liberating─ I am proud to say
that, and it took me until I was about 25 years old before I could really start
admitting it. I was very quick to make
excuses or try to pass the blame onto someone else. As I write this blog, I am in the midst of a
manufacturing blunder. I had to take ownership for the issue in front of my
staff this week and admit to them that this would not have happened had I done
a better job testing and inspecting for failures in the operation and function
of the product. If you have not tasted
the sweet freedom and glory that true ownership and accountability can bring,
then I challenge you to give it a try!
You can start by saying, “that’s on me,” or “totally my fault,”
How about my absolute favorite: “I am a complete idiot.” However it so
happens to go, don’t beat yourself up about it too much, pick yourself up and
make the necessary changes and file that one away as a lesson learned, so it
NEVER happens again.
Some people have a much better batting average than I
do, when it comes to how many tries it takes them to reach success. We actually have students that go through
almost every BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL) Class that are “first
time every time” students. They simply
pass everything on the first try. Don’t
you just hate people like that?! I am actually glad that success for me has
required a whole lot of failure. It
makes the victories that much sweeter and more meaningful.
