Stepping Stones: Facing Failures- Step Eight

From the desk of Hope…

Alice and I “birthed” ERG in 2004. In my previous blogs I have addressed some of the circumstances that surrounded the “birthing” of ERG. If you are curious, the blogs are posted on our website, www.myedresource.com and the series is named “stepping stones”.

One thing that I had not anticipated and was not good at when we “birthed” ERG was failure.

I had been a successful teacher, staff developer and pretty much whatever I set out to do in education, I was successful.

So let me remind you….two teachers with no business experience whatsoever had quit their jobs and set out to open an educational consulting business. My, how brave we were or maybe I should say, my how naive we were?!?

Alice and I both had been successful educators but would we be successful in the business world? This was the big question hanging out there for us and for others who were curious about our fate. We had some people encouraging us to “just do it” and then we had some people who were doubting our success.

Seven years later, ERG is now a successful and thriving staff development business but not with out some failures.

Let’s focus on failure for a second:

Failure: an unsuccessful person, enterprise or thing. This is how the dictionary defines failure. What this definition doesn’t explain, however, is that if you embrace your failures they can turn into successes — failure breeds success. It’s your ticket to another learning session.

Failure is an eye-opener. When you fail at something this is an opportunity to closely examine what you were trying to do.

Failure is a kick in the butt. Maybe this is the time to start trying harder or perhaps try something different.

Failure is a helping hand.  When you fail, this is an opportunity to learn something new.

Failure is not generally something that is fun or popular to talk about and failure is not something that I have always been good at, but failure is something that I have learned how to embrace.

Our vision for ERG has changed over time based on the struggles we have had as business owners. Did we give up? Absolutely not. We tried harder. We learned from our mistakes. We examined what went wrong.  We made adjustments.

Failure can be painful and distressing but failure can also be a good stepping stone to start again.  This is my new and improved attitude I am working on.

My other option is to be fearful of what will happen if things go wrong and complacent so the chance of something going wrong is minimal.  How stressful and stifling! No thank you!

Step Eight: If you face your failures head on, they can turn into successes.