Full Speed Ahead, as Fast as You Can – Try, Learn, and Try Again

Below is an excerpt from the book ‘Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Corporate Playground’ that serves as a reminder to not let anyone or anything stand in the way of your success.  If you haven’t failed, you haven’t lived.

 

From Innovate the Pixar Way:

Remember, when we were very young, we would naturally try, learn, and try again.  Sadly, our natural ability to do this – to trip and fall without fear of criticism – is over in a flash.  Fear of failure can stop success right in its tracks.

While in school, we are often educated into believing that we must succeed – that mistakes should be avoided, But to be successful, we need to learn how to fail and how to respond to failure.

What we call failure is really a learning process.  Randy Nelson, dean of Pixar University “You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success.”

Successful people think of failure as a learning method to propel themselves toward success.

Failures?

• The fax machine was a failed invention in the 1840s
• The copy machine was rejected by GE and IBM in 1937, finally being produced in 1947
• John Grisham’s first novel was rejected by twelve publishers
• Henry Ford was bankrupt five times
• Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime
• Orville Wright was expelled from elementary school
• Michael Jordan once failed to make his high school varsity basketball team
• Oprah Winfrey failed as a news reporter
• Winston Churchill finished last in his class
• J.K. Rowling, the first billion-dollar author, was a jobless, single mom on welfare when she wrote her first Harry Potter book.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you lived so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you failed by default.  Failing forward is about learning from our mistakes – examining failures and moving beyond them to achieve success.

Full speed ahead, as fast as you can – try, learn, and try again.

*Excerpts from: Innovate the Pixar Way: business lessons from the world’s most creative corporate playground / by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson.