FAILURE IS A MUSCLE
I am writing my mentor story. I wonder what has to say about all this. other day I was at an event in Bangalore speaking on stage, and one of the audience members asked me this question.
"It seems, Ankur, your life has had multiple twists and turns. Let's say failures by the definition of what the world calls a failure. You went to the U.S. to do a Ph.D. then you dropped out, came back to India and then you applied to so many business schools. Didn't get through them, and then of course, made it happen. Then you applied to so many consulting firms, didn't make it happen. And then one of them happened and you went on to start on your own. Then you started Nearbuy as well. That wasn't also that great a success.
If I were in your position, I would not even know how to get up and to pull myself out of that mental, emotional, and psychological state that I would be in. How do you deal with failure and how do you make it sound like it's very easy to deal with?"
Here is the truth:
It is never easy to deal with failure the first time.
Think about it like going to the gym.
When you go to the gym for the first day and you workout, whether it's running on the treadmill or it's doing weights or it's anything else - your body is sore at the end of the day, right?
It's screaming - I don't want to go through this pain. Please don't do this again.
And the ONLY THING that gets you out of the pain is to show up again tomorrow.
That's it.
There's nothing else that eliminates the pain.
The best way for you to actually get used to the pain so that there is no pain left anymore and you're not dependent on something external, such as a medicine to cure yourself of it, is to show up at the gym every single day.
Let's take another example.
Let's say you're trying to learn something new, completely new.
Say a musical instrument, or maybe singing or maybe an art form like drawing, sketching, graphic designing, or whatever it is.
Go back to the first day when you did it.
You were terrible, right?
You were so embarrassed of yourself. You were so ashamed of yourself.
Worse, if you are learning with people, then you are thinking - they're laughing at me inside their head.
So you are in this mode where you are feeling embarrassed, you feel like you don't want to do this.
And the ONLY THING that relieves you of that embarrassment is to show up again the next day and to do that task repeatedly so that you get comfortable with whatever is happening to you.
The exact same way you deal with failure as well.
Failure is a muscle.
It's a muscle that you build over time.
And ironically, the only way to build failure as a muscle is to fail.
As often as you can.
I will say that again - the only way to get comfortable with failing is to actually fail as often as you can.
Fail every day.
Do something that scares you, that challenges you, that you are intimidated by.
And the cost of that feeling is very low.
For example, say hi and good morning and smile at somebody who is a complete stranger in the elevator.
Go and ask for money from a stranger at a mall.
Go and ask your boss for a favor that you know they will refuse.
You should be scared of hearing a no. Scared of feeling that rejection.
And if you put yourself in that spot and do it repeatedly, you will be surprised, my friend, at how much these trivial failures will make you more and more comfortable about the real failure, as and when you encounter it in your life.
Because here's the truth.
Everybody in this world will fail. Every single one of us will fail one day.
The difference is not whether we will fail or not.
The difference is how do we pick ourselves up once we have failed.
Build failure just the same way that you would build any other muscle.
On a related note, I'm excited to share with you my new book - 100 Great Online Business Ideas. It's now available on Amazon, and it's packed with useful information to help you start your own online business. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to venture into the world of online entrepreneurship.
Thanks for reading
Love + Respect
Mubashir MK
