Fail Forward

In this episode of the Reach Your Peak podcast, I, Jeff C. Miller, delve into the often uncomfortable topic of failure and its critical role in personal and professional growth. Drawing inspiration from a podcast I recently listened to, I reflect on the insights shared by Rick Warren, the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Warren emphasizes that while people often seek advice on what works, he finds greater value in discussing what doesn’t work, as failures provide invaluable lessons that successes cannot.

As a passionate baseball fan, I use the sport as a metaphor to illustrate my point. In baseball, a player can achieve a Hall of Fame status by succeeding only three out of ten times, highlighting that failure is an inherent part of the journey to success. I encourage listeners to embrace their failures rather than shy away from them, as they are stepping stones to achieving greater goals.

Throughout the episode, I stress the importance of setting ambitious goals, even if they seem daunting. I share my own experiences with setting "big, hairy, audacious goals" (BHAGs) and how, despite not always hitting those targets, I still made significant progress that I wouldn’t have achieved otherwise. I urge listeners to adopt a mindset that accepts failure as inevitable and to learn from it.

I introduce the concept of "failing forward," which means analyzing failures to understand what went wrong and how to improve. I encourage listeners to ask themselves critical questions about their goals and the feasibility of their aspirations. By doing so, they can turn setbacks into learning experiences that propel them forward.

I also touch on the "paralysis of analysis," a mindset I struggled with in my youth, where the fear of imperfection held me back from taking action. I remind listeners that perfection is often unattainable, but striving for excellence is a more realistic and rewarding pursuit.

In closing, I invite anyone who feels overwhelmed by failure to reach out to me through my social media platforms or my website, ApexLeadership.net. I’m here to provide encouragement and support as you navigate your journey. Remember, the key takeaway is to fail forward, learn from your experiences, and keep pushing towards your goals. Thank you for tuning in, and I look forward to connecting with you all soon!

Transcript

Hey, it's Jeff with Apex Leadership Development and Reach Your Peak podcast. So just had another thought, again, this is all about my notes of things that I want to build out and develop for future maybe talks, something like that. So what I'm just thinking about here, I was listening to a podcast of somebody that I really like and talking about failure and I know that Nobody likes failure, right? We all want to be success. We all listen to successful people. If you know who Rick Warren is, the Purpose Driven Life, he used to pastor Saddleback Church. I was in a conference one time and Rick Warren said, people call me up all the time and they say, Pastor Rick, we want to know what's working. And he told them, he said, I would rather tell you what's not working because I learn nothing from my successes, but I learn a lot from my failures. And so it really reminded me of something. I actually made a LinkedIn post about this a long time ago. I'm a big baseball fan, love baseball, let's go O's. You can hate on me, I don't care. But I'm a big baseball fan, and the one thing about baseball is that you can fail two out of three times. I'm sorry, you can be successful three out of 10 times. Wow. Three out of 10. So 30%, 33%, somewhere around in there, and make it to the Hall of Fame. Okay, successful, like a 330, 350 batting average, you know, roughly three to four out of 10. Okay, what about those other times, the other, you know, six and a half to seven at bats that those guys, you know, got up there and swing it? You see what I'm saying? So they don't quit just because they had a strikeout. They don't quit just because they had a ground out. They keep on going. So this is what I want to tell you. You're going to set some goals. You're going to think that there are incredibly actionable goals. You're going to think that there are things every time, like there's some memories that pop up on some social medias, and I won't even say what they were, but there were some really, really big, hairy, audacious goals, right? BHAG goals, right? Those 10x goals that I was talking about. I probably shouldn't have even set that goal and I didn't make it. Along the way, I did achieve something. I made it to another level that I would never have made it to had I not attempted that really huge goal. So yeah, we want actionable goals. We want goals that scare us a little bit like we've talked about in the past couple videos, past couple things. But don't be afraid that you're going to fail. Failure is inevitable. Okay, go ahead and get that in your head. Say it with me. Failure is inevitable. I couldn't hear you. Say it again. Failure is inevitable. I am going to fail. There are going to be times that I don't hit my goal, that I don't do something that I wanted to do, but that is okay because you're never going to learn anything, you're never going to progress, you're never going to move forward unless you learn how to fail right. Failing forward, that's what I want to tell you. We need to learn how to fail forward. So what do you do when you fail? Take a look at it. Why did I fail? Was I set up for success? Was this something that I should have even attempted? If you've never ran two steps and you want to go out and run a marathon next week, you might not be successful. Was it even a goal that I should have set? What would have been a better goal for me to set? Really dig in and analyze those things and see what is it that I needed to learn from this? Was it an experience? You're seeing what I'm saying. If you're going to fail, fail forward. Go for it, try, try big, fail, fail big, but fail forward, learn something from it, take something away from it, and make your next move better because of the failure that you just had. Don't be afraid of failure. When I was younger, I remember living, we call this the paralysis of analysis, right? I thought that I had to be perfect in everything that I do. You can tell by these videos that I got over that, right? I'm not perfect in it. I just want to put something out there, putting my raw thoughts out. I need to develop this thought out a lot more. I just keep on talking because I want to have more than four minutes. I would want to be perfect. You are not going to be perfect the first time you do something. You might not even be perfect the second time you do something. You may never achieve perfection in something that you're doing, but along the way you're going to get to excellence. on the road to perfection you find excellence and the road to failure leads you to excellence. So fail, fail forward, don't sit there and think if I can't do it perfectly, if I can't do it 100% I don't want to do it. Get out there, try to do something, fall on your face, get up and then try again. If you're failing and stuff and you If you want somebody to talk to about it, hit me up on any of my socials. They're connected on the website. They're connected here. Apexleadership.net. I'm connected all over the place. You'll find me. It's Jeff C. Miller on LinkedIn. Hit me up on the platforms and say, hey, Timmy, Jeff, I'm failing. I'll give you some encouragement if you need that. Remember, fail forward and I'll talk to you all later.