Do Not Be Afraid to Fail

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill. “You will never fail if you never try” – Ron Brown.

Do you realize that the very best baseball players who make millions of dollars each year fail 6 ½ times for every 10 times they try? As many of you know much of my career was spent in the direct sales field, in other words I was a door–to–door salesman. Hey, somebody’s got to do it. Our formula was simple, each sale would require three presentations (we would fail two out of three times). Each presentation would require 20 cold calls. So the plan for each day was easy. All we had to do was make 60 cold calls in order to make one sale. Once you got your head around failing 59 out of 60 times you tried, you would be considered a raging success!

Believe it or not, woodturning is a lot like that. Failures in woodturning are usually less black and white and success comes much more often. Paradoxically failing in turning wood is a lot more fun than failing as a door–to–door salesman and a lot of wood turning failures are sitting on display shelves all across the world – I have a few at my house. Can’t roll a decent bead, your coves look like the curb in front of your house? Does a skew chisel scare the daylights out of you? Don’t give up. My point is this, nobody succeeds all the time and some folks succeed less often than others. Keep going keep trying and you will eventually find success.

I draw a lot of strength from others who have succeeded so, I have several points of inspiration for you today because, wherever you go there you are.

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”

― Lance Armstrong, Every Second Counts

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”

― Truman Capote

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

― Winston S. Churchill

Philippians 3:13–14

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.