Being proud of failure

What does it take to be a truly successful woman? At the top of the list is the ability to take risks. But if you risk, it may not always work out. So to be truly successful, women must have the ability to not only tolerate, but learn from their mistakes.

I’ve made mistakes and had some whopping failures. Like when I rented seminar space at the Hilton for a big seminar and then failed to market it adequately. (Looking back, I don’t think my mailing list was large enough to support a seminar of that size. There is a learning!) When I ask women about their business failures, they often look at me blankly, or they simply recoil. Failure! What a loaded word! We don’t want to talk about them, let alone brag about them. But failures are simply mistakes—and we all know logically that you can’t really learn anything without making mistakes. Mistakes can be our greatest teachers.

The bottom line is that often times women don’t risk enough to make any big mistakes in the first place. If you can’t easily come up with some whopping failures—things you tried and didn’t work—that is a sign that you are not taking big enough risks to begin with. We should all have failures that we are proud of. They are badges of honor that show we are out there taking risks and trying to move forward.

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