I'll Take Failure Over Mediocrity Any Day

“Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
--Thomas Edison

If any of us are to succeed in our Mary Kay businesses, we must first fail.

This may, on the surface, sound negative, but in actuality, it's not. There are so many quotations from very successful people that tell us this truth; our own Mary Kay Ash often said that we must "fail forward toward success." Jack Canfield tells us, "There is no failure. Only feedback." Winston Churchill said, "Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”

These successful people understood that what we call "failure" is really just process; it is a learning experience, information that we can use the next time we try. Yet so often we are so afraid of failure that we do not move; our fear is a deep freezer and we the immoble, frozen carcass. Perhaps a small success melts us briefly, only to cause us to, like fluid water, take the path of least resistance to the next spot of immobility, where we once again freeze from fear. Does this cycle sound familiar?

It does to me. And I am just thawing out from the most intense deep freeze thus far in my Mary Kay career.

Back in November, I signed my DIQ papers. By the end of the second month of the qualification period, I was no longer in DIQ -- my recruiting was non-existent and therefore my production was, too. I felt like a failure; I felt like I'd let my family, my mentors, my team down. I entered the deep freeze -- that place where I became convinced I am just no good at this business, that I obviously am not cut out to be a director, that everything always cancels on me and that I should just give up. Not bother. Why try?

But then during a quiet moment putting my son down for a nap, I realized I could make 1 of 3 choices: 1) I could quit Mary Kay, 2) I could stay a consultant but not try to earn the car or become a director, or 3) I could try again for DIQ & the car.

As I allowed my brain to go over these options, I imagined how each one would feel. Quitting Mary Kay all together felt horrible -- I'd miss my friends, the Cadi-shack, the fun. But more importantly, quitting is the only choice that would absolutely guarantee that none of my Mary Kay dreams would ever come true. That made no sense. In fact, that's just plain stupid.

I imagined what it would be like to just be a consultant and not shoot for the big goals, and this sat like a dead weight in my stomach. For me personally, this would go against what originally drew me into Mary Kay -- the opportunity to bust through mediocrity and shoot for the stars.

The only option, then, is to continue to believe. To believe the successful people ahead of me who say, this is not a failure, it's just feedback on how to do better. How could I possibly live with quitting if every moment I was thinking, what if that next call, that next class, that next face was it?

But here is what I want you to understand: We will all at some point in time be in the Deep Freeze. And when we are here, it is a CHOICE to believe we are warm. It is a CHOICE to break free of the ice and heat up the room with our firey belief that we turn into sizzling action! It is only up to us; we can choose to be a frozen carcass -- a big chicken, a turkey, some sort of paltry poultry -- or we can ACT LIKE A WOMAN with a mission, a calling to be something bigger and higher and better than we've ever been before. Each so-called "failure", whether it's a missed goal like the car or DIQ, or a cancelled class, is simply one stepping stone of many on the road to success. And those stepping stones are what keep our feet dry from that fluid river that eventually freezes up again.

I'd rather step on my "failures" and keep my feet dry than get stuck in that frozen river!

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Here are some action items for you to think about till the next post:

1) Revisit a "failure" and discern its feedback. Then apply that feedback to your next attempt!

2) Are you "frozen" in fear of failure? Go do something that scares the wits out of you. ACTION CREATES HEAT!!! Melt your ice with action.

YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!