We don’t glorify failure enough in our country. It is the most important part of life. We glorify success but since our early days in school we are all taught how bad it is to fail, and as a result we avoid it like the plague when in fact we should embrace it as the most important part of life.

You are never going to learn anything unless you start failing. Only one in a million of us will ever wake up and become an instant success at something we want to do. Think about how a child learns to walk. They fall down 100 times before they make it across the room on two feet. It is the basic lesson in life. Falling down and failing is the only way we all learn to do anything. If you wanted to have a life that is protected from failure your mother would be pushing you around in a wheelchair today because you never learned to walk. We all know this about walking, but when we want to do anything else new in life we’re told not to do it because we could fall down, get hurt or fail. Well of course that is going to happen. So if you want to live an exciting life, get out there and fail.

I always dreamed of starting a business. But my biggest fear of starting a business was failure. I believed that everyone would point at me as I walked down the street and whisper behind my back that I was a failure. It would be like having a big red F on my forehead. But after my first two businesses failed, I realized that no one else really cared if I failed. Everyone is so involved in their own lives that they really don’t have the time nor interest in the details of my life. Sure, for a few seconds, they may mention something behind my back at the next family reunion, but that will be about it.

After my first 2 businesses failed and I saw that no one cared, it was the most liberating experience of my life, I felt that now I had nothing to lose. I didn’t have much fun in my first two businesses and they failed anyway. So the third time I said to myself, “if the worst thing that can happen to me if I start another business is that I fail, then this time at least I’m going to have fun.”

That’s when things changed. I started a business that was in my soul and I started having fun. Now I was different than anyone else out there and it attracted people to me. I was not longer walking on egg shells every time I made a decision because I was so worried about making a wrong decision and failing. I was out there generating new ideas, solving new problems in the world, having fun, and people liked it.

Looking back I am very grateful that my first 2 businesses failed. If either of them had succeeded they would have been just a mediocre business because I wasn’t having fun. The failures led me to a business where I have a good time and as a result I can do it better than anyone else, because I’m having fun.

Mathew Lesko's thoughts on Life.

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