FAILURE: The Wednesday Word #WednesdayWisdom
WORD:
- Failure (noun)
DEFINITION:
- lack of success.
- an unsuccessful person, enterprise, or thing.
- the omission of expected or required action.
- the action or state of not functioning.
ETYMOLOGY:
- c. 1200, “be unsuccessful in accomplishing a purpose;” also “cease to exist or to function, come to an end;”
- early 13c. as “fail in expectation or performance,” from Old French falir “be lacking, miss, not succeed; run out, come to an end; err, make a mistake; be dying; let down, disappoint”
- (11c., Modern French faillir), from Vulgar Latin *fallire, from Latin fallere “to trip, cause to fall;”
- figuratively “to deceive, trick, dupe, cheat, elude; fail, be lacking or defective.”
- PIE root meaning “to stumble” (source also of Sanskrit skhalate “to stumble, fail;” Middle Persian škarwidan “to stumble, stagger;” Greek sphallein “to bring or throw down,” sphallomai “to fall;” Armenian sxalem “to stumble, fail”).
- If so, the Latin sense is a metaphorical shift from “stumble” to “deceive.” Related: Failed; failing.
FAILURE: The Wednesday Word ACTION IDEA:
- Do you enjoy failure?
- If there was a way you could shift your perception of failure in such a way that you could actually take pleasure from it, would you want to hear about it?
- Considering the PIE root (Proto-Indo-European) meaning is “to stumble” then let’s just drop the following Grant Cardone quote here and rid ourselves of ever failing again?
There is no failure until you quit.”
Which reminded me of the pragmatism of MMA fighter Chael Sonnen when he spoke to his team on TUF Season 17:
When doubt seeps in, you got two roads; you can take either road. You can go to the left or you can go to the right and believe me, they’ll tell you failure is not an option. That is ridiculous. Failure is always an option. Failure is the most readily available option at all times, but it’s a choice. You can choose to fail or you can choose to succeed.”
Now let’s see if my friend Wayne Dyer can help us expand on that…
This may come as a surprise to you, but failure is an illusion. No one ever fails at anything. Everything you do produces a result. If you’re trying to learn how to catch a football and someone throws it to you and you drop it, you haven’t failed. You simply produced a result. The real question is what you do with the results that you produce. Do you leave, and moan about being a football failure, or do you say, “Throw it again,” until ultimately you’re catching footballs? Failure is a judgment. It’s just an opinion. It comes from your fears, which can be eliminated by love. Love for yourself. Love for what you do. Love for others. Love for your planet. When you have love within you, fear cannot survive.”
So yeah… go chew on that for the next 7 days. “Failure is a judgment. It’s just an opinion. It comes from your fears, which can be eliminated by love.”
Which as Stephen R Covey teaches in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a verb. It’s an action…
And what do we do in the Cardone Zone? We take 10X massive levels of action here.
So in conclusion, if you think you’re a failure, you’re operating out of fear which can be handled through study, practice, reflection and observation.
So as long as you don’t quit, you can’t fail.
