By Books Author Denise Turney

Staying motivated through failures is a must if you want to experience ongoing success. You’ll need tools and techniques to stay motivated because the path to success is not a straight line. In fact, there are twists and turns so sharp, you might question why you ever believed you could achieve a certain goal.

Clarity as a Prerequisite to Staying Motivated Through Failures

On the other hand, if you’ve already started working your vision, exercised courage and are going after your destiny, you know that failure is part of the success road. However, knowing you’ll make mistakes and face challenges doesn’t make the journey easier. That’s why, to achieve ongoing success, you have to really want what you say you want.

By itself, this clarity makes staying motivated through failures possible. For you, clarity might come after you receive a vision, an inner short-clip-of-sorts, that details what you should do while you’re in this world.

Or you might be inspired to pursue arts, science, entertainment, sports, education, ministry or technology from watching a movie or reading a book. Either way, you’d clearly know, absolutely know, what you came here to do.

Starting Out on the Road to Success

Soon, you’re rolling up your sleeves, perhaps telling family and friends about your success dream. If you’re not careful, you might quit your day job, visions of you racking up sales at your “dream job” filling your imagination.

Sounds so good. Feels great. But, in this world, there are surprises, disappointments, lessons to be learned and setbacks, particularly as you pursue your destiny. For example, you might have a stellar business launch, perhaps attracting the attention of major media outlets, only to have sales arrive so fast that you struggle to fill orders on time.

This is what happened to some booksellers who got press during COVID lockdowns. Book orders came in so fast, it was tough for bookstores to fill the orders, especially considering that mail operated with limited staff due to the virus.

That’s when “success” pivots into setbacks (or failures) and lessons learned. You could circumvent these failures through research. For instance, in this case, as a bookseller you could research contracts with wholesalers who generally fill book orders within 24 hours. You could also research overnight shipping options, shortcutting the time it takes to get books from your store to customers. Even so, there be more unexpected events ahead.

When The Unexpected Happens – Staying Motivated Through Failures

Besides being unprepared for significant uptick in sales, other failures you could encounter on the success road include:

• Falling out-of-bounds with industry policies and regulations (being pulled in five or more directions could cause you to lose focus on a policy which could, over time, find you running afoul of regulations)
• Hiring the wrong staff (do this and you could end up completing projects yourself because the people you hired don’t have the skills to do what you hired them to do)
• Taking on more than you have the bandwidth to successfully pull off
• Not generating enough sales to cover your overhead
• Investing money in marketing and promotion efforts only to go into debt because your sales never match, let alone surpass, marketing and promotion investments
• Sacrificing sleep to keep creating, marketing and distributing products and services

Staying Motivated Through Failures – How Much Should You Sacrifice for Success

Most of all, you might spend less time with family and friends just so you can pursue your dream. This is like wresting with an addiction. You keep telling yourself that you’ll spend time with your kids, partner or friends in a week, in a month, over the holidays.

You get the point.

Before you know it, your kids are grown and you haven’t spent much time with them (remember the song by Sandy and Harry Chapin – “The Cat’s In The Cradle”) . Another painful failure that you could encounter on the road to success is the delay of what you want happening.

Now, this is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to staying motivated through failures. It’s not easy to stay motivated when you’re working hard, making sizable investments and not getting what you want.

So, what do you do?

Staying Motivated Through Failures on the Road to Success

How can you motivate yourself when little seems to be going right? How can you keep your spirits lifted when, despite your efforts, you keep facing failures?

To start, remember that you’ll never achieve the success you want if you quit. Also, remember that success is never owned. In fact, although success is a choice, it’s not like a coat.

You can’t own and hang success in a closet. So, in addition to remembering that success is never owned, be open to change. After all, what got you success, including quantum success, a year or more ago, may not yield the same results today.

Most of all, remember why you got started. Recall your vision. Revisit your destiny, how and when it came to you. Let that vision, that motivation, lead you.

Success Choices To Staying Motivated Through Failures

Be persistent; be consistent. On the success road, you must be tenacious. You also have to find ways to stay motivated. Here are actions you could take to keep going when the pull to quit gets strong:

• Listen to deep meditation tapes to train your brain for success
• Sharpen your vision so you’re clear on what you need to do to yield the results you want
• Meditate on success quotes
• Talk with people who achieved their dream, asking them to share failures they faced and what they did to stay motivated and move beyond those setbacks
• Join professional groups with memberships that include people with passions similar to yours. Share successes and mistakes. Also, network with these people to learn about new technologies, marketing tools and industry trends that you can use to gain traction.

More Paths to Staying Motivated Through Failures to Achieve Success

• Read books about success, including books about success principles
• Write down dreams you have that reveal tips on how you can shortcut the road to success
• Journal about your feelings, especially during times when you find staying motivated through failures difficult.
• Create a detailed plan, mapping out actions you will take to get from where you are now to where you want to be
• Hang pictures of what your life will look like when you fulfill your destiny around your home
• Complete at least three actions a day that bring you closer to what you want. If you start to feel vulnerable, like giving up, remind yourself why you got started.

Instead of focusing on failures, review your daily actions, making changes as needed. Also, review monthly time and money investments, again making adjustments. Show your inner critic that you are taking smart actions. Prove to yourself that you are setting yourself up to experience ongoing success. After all, success is never owned. You have to keep reaching for it, achieving success, experience after experience. It’s a journey Mulukan, in the story Long Walk Up, is more than familiar with.