Finding happiness in unhappiness; success in failure!

Finding happiness in unhappiness; success in failure!

via Business Insider by Travis Bradberry

One of the biggest roadblocks to success is the fear of failure.

Fear of failure is worse than failure itself because it condemns you to a life of unrealized potential.

A successful response to failure is all in your approach.

In a study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers found that success in the face of failure comes from focusing on results (what you hope to achieve), rather than trying not to fail.

While it's tempting to try and avoid failure, people who do this fail far more often than those who optimistically focus on their goals.

"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."  — Winston Churchill

This sounds rather easy and intuitive, but it's very hard to do when the consequences of failure are severe. The researchers also found that positive feedback increased people's chances of success because it fueled the same optimism you experience when focusing solely on your goals.

The people who make history — true innovators — take things a step further and see failure as a mere stepping stone to success. Thomas Edison is a great example. It took him 1,000 tries to develop a light bulb that actually worked. When someone asked him how it felt to fail 1,000 times, he said, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."

That attitude is what separates the successes from the failures. Thomas Edison isn't the only one. J. K. Rowling's manuscript for Harry Potter was only accepted after 12 publishers denied it, and even then she was only paid a nominal advance.

Oprah Winfrey lost her job as a Baltimore news anchor for becoming too emotionally involved in her stories, a quality that became her trademark. Henry Ford lost his financial backers twice before he was able to produce a workable prototype of an automobile. The list goes on and on.

"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." — Henry Ford

So, what separates the people who let their failures derail them from those who use failure to their advantage? Some of it comes down to what you do, and the rest comes down to what you think.

The actions you take in the face of failure are critical to your ability to recover from it, and they have huge implications for how others view you and your mistakes. There are five actions you must take when you fail that will enable you to succeed in the future and allow others to see you positively in spite of your failure.

1. Break the bad news yourself.

If you've made a mistake, don't cross your fingers and hope no one will notice, because someone is going to — it's inevitable. When someone else points out your failure, that one failure turns into two. If you stay quiet, people are going to wonder why you didn't say something, and they're likely to attribute this to either cowardice or ignorance…

…read the full & original article HERE