Block Standard Network

Well it is the third month of the New Year, a time where most new year’s resolutions are hitting their plateau and will begin to taper off sooner than later. My readers all know that part of my resolution was to continue updating my blog on a consistent basis and I feel I have been holding true to that for the most part.

But for others they are beginning to show the symptoms of a failed resolution: exhaustion from a workout schedule they cannot keep, starvation from an extreme diet, or boredom from updating a blog that seems to have not as many readers as expected (this has to hit home for some).

The truth is that within any new project, task, or job you will get burn out at some point in time. Some can hold off this phenomenon for a while but it will catch up to them. Yet, instead of quitting all together, just take a break. Maybe a day, maybe a week, but just take some time to yourself and set a date to start back up again. So many great ideas have been lost in time due to people burning themselves out and quitting.

Anything that you put your hard work and effort into is going to take some time to develop into an actual entity. Knowing this can greatly help a project because you will not be afraid when things do not happen “overnight” like you may have wished. The greatest business minds that the world has seen did not panic when things did not happen as soon as predicted. Nor did they panic if they failed a few times before having measurable success.

We all know about John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie and the success each has had with the business ventures. We know of the horizontal and vertical integration techniques they used as well as the development of the “Corporate Merger”. But what most do not know is the number of FAILED businesses each had before they had success. Imagine if each of these men (who have been called by some as the people solely responsible for jumpstarting the American economy as we know it) had quit after every time they failed. Needless to say the world would be a different place.

We are taught all our lives to FEAR failure, run from it and stay as far away as possible. This couldn’t be any further from the truth. Failure can (and SHOULD) be used as a tool to learn from, an object of growth. Only through failure can we learn from our own personal mistakes and keep our business as well as ourselves growing with the times. Take this quote from Henry Ford to heart, it sums up just about everything I said in this article in one simple line.

“Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.” (Henry Ford)

Now sit back and think; do you have any projects that you are burning yourself out on? Do you have a great idea but are scared of failure? Who knows what that idea may grow into if you just stick with it.