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Is Failure a Good Thing? -Tony Escobar


IS FAILURE A GOOD THING?
Copyright: January 2013, from the book “Step Out, Step In and Step Up”                  
By Tony Escobar

For many years I was a committed weight lifter. When I was 41 years old I bench pressed 545 pounds, dead-lifted 625 and squatted 550 pounds. That is what you call a 1725 pound triple. What was amazing about this accomplishment is my body weight was only 220 pounds. My wife Randi was only 130 pounds when she squatted 240 pounds at the age of 37. It even amazes me to this day that I actually benched and squatted 2.5 times my body weight and dead-lifted almost 3 times my body weight. If there is one thing I learned about my weight lifting achievements is that I made it to the top by doing a few things right. The first thing I did was I challenged myself everyday I worked out, because I knew that muscles only grow and get stronger if you work them till they fail. Weightlifting is perhaps the only sport where you succeed by failing every day.

When my wife and I decided to get into network marketing we knew that our eventual success could only be achieved through overcoming obstacles, making mistakes and failing once in a while. This is why we brought our power lifting, training philosophy and attitude with us when we started our network marketing business.

Your muscles grow and get stronger by doing more than you think you can do through persistent effort. In network marketing your attitude, passion, enthusiasm and determination grows by doing more through this same persistent and determined effort.

Network marketing is not about being in the right place at the right time, it is about being in the right place all the time. It’s not about luck, it’s about hard work an overcoming self-limiting attitudes, perceptions and learning from adversity, difficulty and disappointment. Network marketing is not about small steps and trying, its about quantum leaps and doing.

“What is luck? One things for sure, if you don’t succeed at something the first time, that’s luck.”

When Randi and I first jumped into network marketing we asked many network-marketers who had quit the business many probing questions. We developed our strategy from the answers we received. Our record-breaking strategy was,

1.  Teaching our distributors to get prepared and ready for their businesses by letting go of their past mistakes and organizing themselves.
2.  Teaching our distributors the importance of having a companion to work with.
3.  Teaching distributors to overcome the fear of talking to people.
4.  Encouraging our distributors to educate themselves about their company, products, compensation plan and about the people that work the industry.
5.  Teaching our distributors to learn from their mistakes
6.  Teaching our distributors to avoid distraction
7.  Teaching our distributors to reject rejection and to learn and grow from rejection
8.  Teaching our distributors to avoid selling products. Potential customers are sick and tired of being sold, they want to be convinced and amazed with passion, enthusiasm and product knowledge.
9.  Teaching our distributors to focus on their purpose, their mission and not the commission. Focus on the mission and the commission always follows the mission.
10. Teaching our distributors to follow through effectively.

Failure is easy, just quit! Adversity and challenges are always there and will always be there; accept them as learning and growing experiences and challenge yourself even more.

“You will never fear failure as long as you are determined never to fail.” 

Do more than is expected of you. Success or failure is a head game that can always be conquered, if you make every effort to overcome and win the game. 

If you believe that there are confines and limits on your talents and abilities you’d better clear your head and get those thoughts out of your head. You will find yourself bumping into many obstacles and potholes and you will make many mistakes on your journey to success. These are all good things to be grateful for!

Mistakes, obstacles and even failure are easily overcome if you don’t quit. Quitting is complete and absolute. Unconditional quitting is unconditional failure and must be avoided and circumvented at all costs, because quitting is unconditional confirmation of your perceived limitations. Quitting reinforce your sense of ostensible incompetence.
Your passion and your talents always grow through persistence, determination and effort, especially when you recognize failure as a wonderful opportunity to improve yourself and grow stronger.

Distributors with a “growth attitude” never place limitations on what they can do, especially when they're learning from their mistakes, disappointments and even failure.

“Failure is a temporary circumstance or event. Quitting is what makes it lasting and permanent.”

If you are a distributor with a optimistic mindset, then you will use rejection, mistakes, disappointment and failure to propel yourself onward and forward.

“The optimist speaks about their future because they have let go of their past, the pessimist often speaks of their past because they haven’t seized their future.” 

You have to be incisive and perceptive about when you choose to challenge yourself. Don’t ever be afraid to push the envelope and take a risk. It is so very important to know that taking a risk, making mistakes and failing, is how you grow and succeed; it’s how you get stronger. Taking a risk and failing is a marvelous opportunity to lift yourself higher than you ever thought possible.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always be what you’ve always been and you will never be what you could’ve been and you will never get what you could have got.”

Understand that working as hard as you possibly can, going the extra mile is the key to maximizing your potential and achieving the success you are looking for.

If you want to experience excellence, challenge yourself above and beyond your ability and your capability. It’s OK to struggle sometimes.

Building muscles and becoming stronger hurts because you push yourself to failure. Building your business takes effort, hard work and the same amount of pushing. You have to push yourself beyond what you perceive as your limitations.
“Two prisoners looking at the same set of bars, one sees bars to contain him, the other sees a challenge to liberate him.”

I have rubbed shoulders with some of the most successful business owners in the world, people who earn billions of dollars, not millions. I have spoken from the stage all over the world to thousands of business people and I have heard from many.

“Knowledge is knowing what has to be done, talent is knowing you can do it, skill is knowing how to get it done and your passion and purpose gets it done.”

One thing that I have found is that most of them failed half the time, yet they never quit! Most veterans of network marketing that I have talked to tell me that they failed half the time also, but remember leaders never quit, and quitters never get the opportunity to lead. An hour of study done every day and talking to ten people a day every day will ensure your success in anything you do.

“The greatest tragedy in network marketing is people quitting never realizing how close they were to succeeding.”

No matter how hard you study, how hard you work, how many calls you make or how many people you talk to, you can always do more!

“Many wish for it only a few work for it.”

Just like lifting weights, work those muscles to failure every day and you can literally watch them grow and become stronger. Work your business with the same commitment, determination and strength of mind and you can literally watch your business grow beyond your wildest dreams.

All growth and progress depends upon your effort. Effort is spelled “hard work.”







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