Me? Big Time Failure!

I worked for 4 companies throughout my corporate career and never lasted longer than 4 years at any of them. My failure to be able to “tolerate” simply doing something because someone said it should be done is what routinely led to my departure.

I’ve failed, many times over, to keep my weight in check. While I’m nowhere near obese, I am also nowhere near my svelte days when I was on the football team in high school or when I rode as a bike messenger. I get the weight off by riding hundreds of miles on my bike, and then manage to gain it back months (sometimes years) later.  Blame this failure on my immense love of food and inability to control my desire to feed my face!

After three years of running this company night and day, I’ve failed to achieve the revenue or profit goals that we outlined in our original business plan. What’s worse is that people would consider me a  “smart” finance person and I’m supposed to be good at numbers right?  So why then could I not accurately project the revenues and expenses of this company over that three year period? Oh yeah, because this was uncharted territory for me – having to figure out exactly how many clients you get when you spend $X on a marketing campaign. Better yet, figuring out which marketing campaign even works!

On top of the above, I’ve failed my family for years. I’ve failed to spend as much time with them as I both want and should. I’ve failed to be there when they’ve rung me on the phone and I thought “I’m busy with something, I’ll just call them back later.” I’ve failed my wife and daughter by not giving them all the hugs, kisses and love that I can possibly muster. With all these failures, I’m surprised that I am even loved at all.

So why do I keep failing? Well, I wrote about that extensively in this post so I won’t rehash any of it. But you want to know the interesting thing? Most people are failures.  Let me explain.

Failure is defined as the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. The key component in the preceding sentence is “may be” and should not be misconstrued with “is.” In other words, failure is simply not meeting an objective. This doesn’t mean that you are not succeeding or will not achieve your goal at some point. The key in moving from failure to success can be summed up in the following quotes:

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy

“Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” – Gena Showalter

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” – Denis Waitley

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

With that said, yes, I am a failure.  Most of us are failures.  But mark my word, at some point in the future someone will say “Jared Rogers a failure? That guy has to be one of the most successful people I know!” Yet, they won’t be saying this because I was a failure; they’ll be saying it because I didn’t quit.

Until next time…