HOW TO PROFIT FROM FAILURE

1. Change Your Attitude

Business staffing pioneer Robert Half observed, “Laziness is a 

secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it’s only kept a secret 

from the person who fails.” People who success develop an attitude 

of tenacity. They refuse to quit, and they are determined not to let 

failure defeat them. If you desire to fulfill your dreams, achieve your 

goals, and live life to the fullest, that’s the kind of attitude you need 

to cultivate.

2. Change Your Vocabulary

A noted psychiatrist once remarked that the two saddest words in 

the human vocabulary are “if only.”

Failure isn’t failure if you do better the next time. In Leaders on 

Leadership, Warren Bennis interviewed seventy of the nation’s 

top performers in numerous fields. None of them used the word 

failure to describe their mistakes. Instead they referred to learning 

experiences, tuition paid, detours, or opportunities for growth. You 

may think that’s a small difference, but that small difference can 

make a big difference. The way you think determines how you act.

3. Pay Little Attention to the Odds

Every person who has ever achieved something significant had 

to overcome the odds. The problem for most people isn’t the odds. 

It’s that they sell themselves too short. R. H. Headlee 

observed, “Most people think too small, aim too low, and quit 

too soon.”

When it comes to the thing you love to do, the things you were 

made to do, aim high. The odds matter little. Whether you fall 

down along the way matters little. You fell when learning to 

walk, didn’t you? Maxwell Maltz, developer of psycho-cybernetics, 

says, “You are champion in the art of living if you reach only 

65 percent of your goals.” Remember, if at first you don’t 

succeed, then know that you’re running about average.

4. Let Failure Point You to Success

5. Hold on to Your Sense of Humor

One of the best things you can do for yourself when you fail is to 

learn to laugh.

6. Learn from Your Mistakes

Successful restauranteur and celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck 

said, “I learned more from the one restaurant that didn’t work 

than from all the ones that were successes.”

“Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” (Robert Kiyosaki, 

Rich Dad, Poor Dad) That’s the mark of a great attitude! You don’t 

lose—you learn.

7. Don’t Lose Your Perspective

Failure is just like success—it’s a day-to-day proves, not some-

place you arrive one day. Failure is not a one-time event. It’s how 

you deal with life along the way.

8. Don’t Become too Familiar with Failure

9. Make Failure a Gauge for Growth

Successful people understand the role failure plays in achievement. 

That’s true in any life endeavor. Inventor Thomas Edison said, “I’m 

not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another 

step forward.” And gold-medal-winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton 

asserted, “Achieving that goal is a good feeling, but to get there you 

have to also get through the failures. You’ve got to be able to pick 

yourself up and continue.” The farther you go, the more failures 

you experience.

Psychologist Joyce Brothers observed, “The person interested in 

success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part 

of the process of getting to the top.” As actor Mickey Rooney said, 

“You always pass failure on the way to success.”

10. Never Give Up

Author, lawyer, economist, and actor Ben Stein says, “The human 

spirit is never finished when it is defeated. It is finished when it 

surrenders.”

From "The Difference Maker" by John Maxwell