Not Every Failure Gets You a Brownie Point…

They say, “failure is the stepping stone of success.”

Nice saying.

Makes sense – most of the time.

Not always.

If you are running a marathon and you give up after running hundred meters and say that you were a failure, you don’t get a brownie point for trying.

Heck, you don’t even get sympathy for that.

And it is clear that with that kind of “trying” there is no way it will turn out to be a stepping stone for future success.

For you to get a brownie point for failure, there has to be unquestionable proof that you tried with your heart giving your 110% into that attempt.

If you make a weak attempt just to put a checkmark to earn a stripe for failure, you will be exposed.

A simple rule I use when someone talks about failure is to find out what was at stake when they did make an attempt. If nothing substantial was at stake, there is a good chance that they were fashionably failing to earn a stripe.

Sometime in 1998, I met an entrepreneur (name withheld) who made a bold attempt to bring subscription-based video streaming service. He had secured licenses for a few thousand movies. Bandwidth was a problem, but he was hoping that people will schedule downloads and then watch the movies in the early days. He thought he could catch the trend a bit early. Final result: Failure. He was way too early to the market.

Compare the above story to the marathon story.

One is a joke.

Other one is a bold attempt.

You know the difference and the world around you knows that too.

Failure because of half-hearted attempts, stupidity, ignorance, meaningless stubbornness and lame excuses rarely get credits for being real failures.

Photo Courtesy: Behrooz Nobakht on Flickr