The one thing successful people never do

It’s hard to feel successful when you’re staring failure in the face. Maybe you’ve lost a job, had to close a business, or been told that your brilliant idea won’t work. You feel like a complete failure.

But I have news for you: It’s what you do next that counts.

There’s a wonderful Winston Churchill quote about this: “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

In other words, the one thing successful people never do is give up just because they failed.

Churchill himself is an excellent example of this mindset. The Nobel laureate and twice-elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom didn’t do well in school; in fact, he failed one year entirely! And if that weren’t enough, he also lost every single election he ran in until he was elected Prime Minister at the age of 62.

Even some of the most successful people of all time have failed — epically and repeatedly.

Michael Jordan, the basketball superstar, was cut from his high school basketball team. He famously said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. Twenty-six times I was trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.” Jordan would never have become the sports legend he is if he had given up because he missed a few shots or had a bad game.

Even Steve Jobs, arguably one of the most successful business men of all time, was actually fired from Apple, the company he created. Yet he did not give up, and returned to the company a few years later to lead it on to stratospheric success.

Abraham Lincoln is widely recognized as one of America’s greatest presidents, yet he failed time and time again. In his army career, he went off to war as a captain, but returned a private. He started multiple business ventures that went nowhere, and lost nearly every election in which he ran — until he became president.

No matter what your field — or your failure — you must believe in yourself and keep trying. Stephen King submitted his first novel, Carrie, to 30 different editors, and got 30 rejection slips. He went so far as to toss the manuscript in the trash, but his wife convinced him to keep trying and Carrie is now a horror classic. Even Charles Shultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strips, started his career with rejection. His high school newspaper rejected every comic he gave them, and after high school, he was turned down for a job working for Walt Disney (who experienced his fair share of failures as well!).

Elvis Presley was fired after his first performance at the Grand Ole Opry. The Beatles were dropped by their first record label. Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school — three times!

The point, then, is this: You never know when your breakthrough will come. You never know if the next submission or job application you send will be accepted, or the next backer you approach will say yes. If you believe in yourself and in your work, don’t give up. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (With a hat tip to Samuel Beckett.)

This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

To keep up with Forum:Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Author: Bernard Marr is a globally recognized expert in strategy, performance management, analytics, KPIs and big data. 

Image: A worker arrives at his office in the Canary Wharf business district in London February 26, 2014. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh.