Failing Forward

Characteristics:

• Taking Responsibility
• Learning from Each Mistake
• Knowing Failure Is a Part of Progress
• Maintaining a Positive Attitude
• Challenging Outdated Assumptions
• Taking New Risks
• Believing Something Didn't Work
• Persevering

No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist. – Calvin Coolidge

Seven abilities needed to fail forward:

1. Achievers reject rejection.
2. Achievers see failure as temporary.
3. Achievers see failures as isolated incidents.
4. Achievers keep expectations realistic.
5. Achievers focus on strengths.
6. Achievers very approaches to achievement.
7. Achievers bounce back.

The benefits of adversity:

1. Adversity creates resilience.
2. Adversity develops maturity.
3. Adversity pushes the envelope of accepted performance.
4. Adversity provides greater opportunities.
5. Adversity prompts innovation.
6. Adversity recaps unexpected benefits.
7. Adversity motivates.

Characteristics of Don’t-Dare-Miss-It People:

1. They find opportunities.
2. They finish their responsibilities.
3. They feed on impossibilities.
4. They fan the flame of enthusiasm.
5. They face their inadequacies.
6. They figure out why others failed.
7. They finance the cost into their lifestyle.
8. They find pleasure in the goal.
9. They fear futility, not failure.
10. They finish before they rest.
11. They follow leaders.
12. They force change.
13. They fish for solutions.
14. They fulfill their commitments.
15. They finalize their decisions.

Steps to Failing Forward:

1. Realize there is one major difference between average people and achieving people.
2. Learn a new definition of failure.
3. Remove the "you” from failure.
4. Take action and reduce your fear.
5. Changing your response to failure by accepting responsibility.
6. Don’t let the failure from outside get inside you.
7. Say good-bye to yesterday.
8. Change yourself, and your world changes.
9. Get over yourself and start giving yourself.
10. Find the benefit in every bad experience.
11. If at first you do succeed, try something harder.
12. Learn from bad experience and make it a good experience.
13. Work on the weakness the weakens you.
14. Understand there is not much difference between failure and success.
15. Get up, get over it, get going.

Source: Failing Forward. Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success (2000) by John C. Maxwell.