Fail on your way to success
Life can be seen as a series of failures punctuated by high points: successes. What many don’t realize is that it follows that the higher level of success you achieve in your life, the more failure you will experience. And we have to have both, both the failures and the successes, because how else could we appreciate our success when it finally comes.
Jack Canfield said in an interview that Chicken Soup For The Soul® (co-written by Mark Victor Hansen) was rejected by 144 publishers.
“…no one wanted it. Everyone said it was a stupid title, that no one bought short story collections, that there was no advantage, no sex, no violence. Why would anyone read it?”
His agent gave up after the first 33 rejections from New York publishers.
“Sorry guys, I can’t sell it.”
Frankly, could I blame him? After all, he didn’t have the same personal investment in this product as Jack Canfield and his co-author Mark Victor Hansen.
But the “experts” were wrong.
Chicken Soup For The Soul® became an international bestseller and inspired an entire series of over 100 Chicken Soup books with such obscure titles as Chicken Soup For The Scrapbooker’s Soul and Chicken Soup For The Pet Lover’s Soul Dog Food. Actually!
Ultimately, the agent’s lack of staying power turned out to be an advantage for Canfield and Hansen, as they were able to keep the agent’s 15% commission.
It takes a very special mindset to seemingly persevere against all odds: the mindset of a goal achiever, the mindset of a winner.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen aren’t the only authors who have suffered repeated rejection for their literary endeavors. John Grisham’s A Time to Kill was also repeatedly rejected. A Time to Kill became a great movie with an all-star cast that included Samuel L Jackson, Sandra Bullock, and Matthew McConaughey. Roots by Alex Haley was rejected. However, the TV serialization of Roots took the world by storm. James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy was initially self-published. It was its underground success that made publishers sit up and take notice. The Celestine Prophecy is a testament to the power of viral marketing. It sold over a hundred thousand copies within a few months of its first printing, mostly by word of mouth.
So if you really believe in something, within reason of course, then follow it. Keep trying different combinations and approaches until you find a way to make your idea, your dream come true.
I recently read about Corey Rudyl, the internet marketing guru who turned a $25 investment into over $40,000,000 in online sales and in the process helped thousands of people start their own internet businesses. Corey died suddenly and tragically in a car accident last year. Corey loved car racing and he also loved the internet business. He was only 34 years old when he died and it is a testament to his tenacity, perseverance and vision that the company he founded, Internet Marketing Centre, continues to grow ever more profitable under the leadership of his protégé, Derek Gehl.
Did Corey Rudyl make mistakes? Of course he did, but he didn’t see them as such. He had the foresight to recognize that every “failure” could become a great success if he simply applied the lessons he learned from his mistakes.
However, perhaps one of the most famous men who did not give up in the face of repeated failure was Thomas Edison. When Napoleon Hill interviewed Edison, he joked that if he hadn’t found the secret of the incandescent lamp, he would be in the lab working on it right now instead of wasting time talking to him. Edison also said:
“I had to be successful because I eventually ran out of things that wouldn’t work.”
Now we all benefit from Thomas Edison’s invention in ways that Edison himself may have found too numerous to contemplate. Or maybe I’m being presumptuous.
Walt Disney was another great visionary who never gave up. When it was discovered that he was buying thousands of acres of swamp land in Florida, people thought he had lost his mind, but they had no vision of him. Walt Disney actually died before his dream could be fully realized.
Someone later commented to a Walt Disney associate that it was a shame he didn’t see his theme park in all its glory. The associate smiled and replied:
“Oh, he saw it.”
Perhaps Thomas Edison’s vision of how the incandescent light bulb would illuminate our lives was far more detailed and expansive than I give him credit for. Who am I to speak? As I work to remove my limiting beliefs, I don’t know if he would have had the staying power to do 10,000 experiments.
I guess my point is that if you learn from your failures and keep striving to achieve your goals or dreams, you will achieve success because what you seek is also seeking you. I’d like to leave you with this quote from Thoreau:
“If a person confidently moves in the direction of his dream and strives to live the life he has envisioned, he will meet with unexpected success in ordinary hours.”