“On my way to being the best I had to fail to reach success.”

In our culture failure is often thought of as a negative. We strive for constant success. Winning is everything we are told. Second place is no place. Yet, without failure where would each of us be? Everyone has had failures in their life at some point. It could be a failure on a test. A failure to win a team sport. A failure to connect with that one opportunity because we feared the failure. We perhaps thought, why even try if failure is emanate?

Let me suggest that without the many failures I have encountered, I would not have reached today’s success. This begs the question, how can one overcome failure? Try once more, only this time differently. I am no expert on overcoming failure or reaching success. I can only share my experience of how I have failed and more importantly, how I have bounced back to triumph another day. Throughout my life I have played on failed teams, failed classes, had failed relationships, a failed marriage, worked on a failed political campaign, and failed to take out the trash. My response, who cares? So I failed. Big deal! After brushing off a bruised ego or body, I get up and begin again.

Failure is the natural progression of having tied to do something and not being immediately successful. This is where most of us stop and we become defeatist. The key to your future success is persistence. The 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge once said, "Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, press on, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race." So, press on. Be persistent. Be determined.

Upon your next failure, ask yourself, what did I learn? How can I incrementally improve to the next higher level? What am I going to do to ensure a better outcome the next time? How can I use the experience to move forward and fail again? Yes, failure is rewarded when you try one more time and break though the barrier of the past. You will not reach your success without taking a chance at something you previously thought impossible. Plan, practice, persist and prosperity will surely be your reward.

When you reach, you extend the possibility for success. Stretch your mind to believe that without failure there is no reward, no success. Fail more often. Move your failure forward in your learning cycle. Fail in the direction you wish to grow and achieve. Fail is a four letter word like work, that will get you to the pinnacle of your dreams and goals. Work on your failures, don’t let your failures work on you. “On your way to being the best, failure will help you to reach your success.

Write it down in a Word document, read it aloud and then post it.

I recently had a friend ask that I buy her some Toastmasters manuals at a regional event she could not attend. I was happy to oblige. Via e-mail I asked where I could meet her to drop them off. She replied back on her so called “smart” phone. “Drop them at my house, I “love” at…… address.” When I pointed out that this was too much information, we both had a good laugh. My story illustrates a point about writing either by e-mail, smart phone or on a social media site.

Whether it’s for professional or personal use I always want to appear somewhat intelligent in how I speak and write. An idea I like to share with folks on postings for E-mail, Facebook, Twitter or any other Social Media is to write your message out on a separate Word document. Check it for misspellings. You may have “spell checked” a word that is spelled correctly yet it is the wrong word. I don’t know about you but my wife can’t spend all her time correcting my bad spelling. She has things to do.

Check to make sure any links you add work correctly and you are sending your reader to the right web site. I once posted a link and had omitted one letter. My readers were sent to an adult web site that most found a bit embarrassing about. I received a few unpleasant e-mails back, yet others thanked me. The point being this was not the web site I wanted them to find. Some asked what I really did in my free time.

Read your message out loud. Ask yourself, does this make sense as written or can I make it more powerful with fewer words? How is my sentence structure? Can it be easily followed? People often write in abbreviation these days. I have to reread their messages to find out what they are referring to. Unless you are texting, please do not abbreviate common words. I could have written TMI in the first paragraph, yet how would you know that it meant, Too Much Information?

When I am finished with what I have written, I read it out loud. I write just like I speak, yet sometimes it will not read well. I therefore have to recompose what I have written. When I am satisfied with the way the message is reading, I copy it and then paste it in the place I wish it to appear.

These suggestions have saved me from having to retrieve a message I was about to post. I followed this process with this article. Yes, it is one more step in a busy day, yet I like to prevent problems rather than fix them. Mistakes will happen, yet you can fix many of them by taking this extra step before you hit “send.” Happy postings.