How do you avoid failure?

I don't think you can avoid failure entirely...this is how we learn.

To limit failure, I try to focus on a small group of projects at a time instead of jumping from project to project as soon as there's a bump in the road....which IMO is the reason for many IMers failures.

Hope this helps,

Kevin

You can't avoid failure...It's a part of life. What you can do is rise every single time you fall. And that's the key to getting what you want out of life.

well actually, as soon as I hit 15 posts, I will be able to post a link to a website where I've learned how to become successful no matter what I choose to do. This doubly ties into internet marketing too!

Failure only occurs when you stop trying. Mistakes and miscalculations happen, you learn from them and move forward. I guess my perspective is bigger picture, no one project can cause my overall failure.

well I think that failure is really un avoidable matter it's part of our cultured daily life
the only thing that I do to avoid is you really need to be cautious at all times to avoid failure. be mindful of what you do to avoid failure or mistakes.

IMO there's no way you can 100% avoid failure.. and why would you want to? It is only through failure that we learn and build character..

You must have realistic short term goals. Then you can go on to realistic long term goals. Focus on success. Remember "Imagination supersedes will." You can not have will until you think of it. This is a very big topic.

I suggest reading a book entitled "Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill."
Another Good book is "Psycho Cybernetic." I forgot who wrote it, but you can do a search. Stay positive no matter what!

Failures are opportunities to learn. As we learn from them we make less mistakes in one area, our experience and expertise grows, and we can tackle a new thing ... where we will make mistakes again and hopefully continue to learn.

Failure is inevitable and is actually healthy because we need mistakes to learn more and become better persons.

I too go for the NLP maxim:

"There is no such thing as Failure. There is only Feedback."

And the Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetic idea of servo-mechanisms and "failure" as feedback is quite similar and very useful too.

Don't focus on failure at all.

Focus only on success.

Whatever you think about, you bring about.

So, you'll attract whatever you think about.

Don´t.

... "FAIL FAST" ... is becoming the new mantra in the scene ... very clever!

Not sure it is always good medicine in all situations,
but without a doubt something to think about .... more than once ... ;-)

Stay focus if works somethings with our job, business always find new knowledge and experience and prepare if bad things happen

I don't think we can avoid failure, no one is perfect and we all make mistakes. However, I agree that if we see our failures as feedback that is a huge help.

To avoid feedback, I try to learn from others. And as MissTerraK said, I find I often learn best from observing something I don't want to copy than from something I would like to copy. For example, as I watched my sister bring up her kids I remember thinking, I sure don't want to do that....and I thought it many, many times. I learned what I didn't want to do by observing what she was doing.

What I do, Is not expect so much from life or myself. Sure, I have expectations. But, when you don't expect too much, you can't fail. Set your goals really low, then you can exceed your goals and not fail.

I think "failure" is subjectively defined. If you feel disappointed about the outcome of a certain action, that is not "failure" that is evidence you're involved in a temporarily unsolved mystery. Keep looking for clues until the mystery is solved.
Susan

I look at it as this. I don't view my mistakes as failure.

There are several ways to get to your house I'm sure. The same way with life. The path you take will get you closer and closer. You may get lost and have to look at your directions again. But once you get back on track you get closer and closer.

Each step you take will get you closer and closer. You may run into some roadblocks on your way, but keep going until you reach your goals.

My best piece of advice to give you is to stay persistent.

You have to want to fail.

But fail small, and succeed big.

If you are always trying to not fail then you wont try risky things. Try them, but make sure that you know the worst case scenario and can deal with it. Be honest with your self, If what your doing doesn't work, what are you going to do next to keep moving toward a big success?

I dont mind if I fail. Its in my nature to put 100% into succeeding in anythign I do so when I fail it isnt so bad. With this effort I dont fail often thoguh!

To minimize the chance of failure, learn from the best.

" You will not live long enough to learn. So, learn from the expert." - Brian Tracy.

But more important than avoiding failure, is the mindset toward failure and can you, how fast you can get back after failure.

I can't avoid failure. All I can do is to figure out the reason of failure and then adjust my plan and keep on going.

1 tip to avoid failure: DO NOT TAKE ANY ACTION

You can't avoid failure if you want to be success. Don't think of failure as a negative thing, its just a valuable experience to your success.

Look at the babies who are trying to stand or even walk. How many times they fail before they can walk? Give yourself that same mentality and you are on your way.

I tell myself this everyday
"I want to have the best job in the world - Take vacation anytime I like - Work anywhere anytime I want - Make more money than I could spent - I see the future in what I'm doing right now - I know for sure Internet Marketing is my future"

Elleran,
What is ''FAILURE''?
I believe it is a term used by our society
when a person does not fit in to their idea of
being successful.
It is only a bend in the road from which we shall" LEARN'

Avoiding failure means not giving a try to be succesful. People who haven't fail, haven't achieved a lot in life. But people who kept failing, learned from their mistakes raised even stronger?

Presupposing you mean that the word "failure" is a bad word-

you don't try to avoid it.

Whatever you're trying to avoid you'll get more of, simply by giving thought and energy to it.

Failure, in my opinion, is simply an opportunity to learn from a mistake or series of mistakes (undesired results). If you look at it that way, you welcome the results and begin to manifest better results. It takes the negative association away.

Pretty soon, you'll see undesired results as opportunities to expand your knowledge about a thing and use that knowledge to help others and get more desired results.

Just my take on it

G

What do you consider failure? Do you have high expectations that you can not reach, or do you have low expection that are more achievable?

Failure is not good, but it only happens when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over agian. Failure, for me, is not learning from what when wrong.

We are all going to make mistakes. It what we take away from them that will make the difference. If you learn from what happened and take action to avoid it in the future, that is not failure, it is success.

It took Eddison 20,000 attempt to create the light bulb. Was he a failure? The reason I don't see him a one, is because every time the light didn't work, he learnt from it, changed his approach and tried something new.

Sometimes what we see as failure can be our greatest learning tool. Plus is can lead to some of pur greatest success.

Oh and do you realise that you can not aim to fail? If you work hard to fail at what you are doing and achieve it, you have then successfully achieved you goal.

Everyone fails. Its how graceful you fall, and learn from your mistakes to not make the same failure twice.

There's a quote which says something like "the more you fail, the more you succeed"
I believe Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as a prime example of the truth of this!

Failure cannot be ignored properly as it is a part of human personality & improvement.
But quality of work can be improved by proper planning & preview before your work release.

Mimic other successful people and do what worked for them.

"Achievers find opportunity in every failure, Non-achievers see failure in every opportunity."

I try to be consistent with that thought

Alex

To me, failure is actually part of life. I don't think I've ever met somebody who can totally avoid failure. Without it, will never learn and improve.

However, never fail twice in the same field once you have learned.

In NLP we say 'there is no such thing as failure...only feeback'

We also say: failure *if that's what you want to call it' is a thing, not a person.

I usually avoid failures by planning out things carefully and believe in what I do.

How do I avoid failure? Well, actually, I don't.

I'm of the opinion that success is built on failure. That failure is a prerequisite of success. So the question, for me, isn't "How do you avoid failure." But rather

"How do you make the most of failure when it happens?"

That's been answered perfectly by the vast majority of people here. And, like them, I handle failure by being positive, optimistic, and looking at failure as feedback. Edison said: "I am not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." He was wrong. (It's much more than that.)

Napoleon Hill contributed: "Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit."

Now we're getting somewhere.

That's the most profound quotation I've read. At least in terms of personal achievement. And, it's like having "The Key To The Kingdom." Because with one turn of this key the doors a failure and adversity swing open and reveal marvellous opportunities for learning and personal growth.

For me, that's the best way of handling failure.

I'm often reminded of this quotation by Thomas J. Watson "Go a head and make mistakes, make all you can because, remember, that is where you will find success."

(My apologies if I've repeated something I've said before. I thought it would be worth repeating as a reminder and for people new to the forum. Thank you. )

Experience, intuition and education.

I must say it almost difficult to avoid failure. As human, we will always do some failure in our life. But, the most important is to learn from that failure so we won't do the same in the future.

Old proverb said,"Experience is the best teacher." But to minimize doing failure, try to make some plan about your work and learn from the experts. That's what I usually do, exactly. Read some good books, it really helps.

I've enjoyed reading all the responses here even the ones I don't completely agree with.

I believe that what we call 'failure' is an abbreviation for a whole swag of experiences and events that can be summarized as 'things not going the way we want them to'.

Based on that and responding to your revised question about how to avoid failure, this is what I've done: Changed my attitude about 'failure', which I think is what many of the people here also advocate.

Personally, I don't tend to see things as having failed and I certainly don't think of myself as a failure under any circumstances although there was a time when I did allow myself such silliness :-).

I like the Buddhist perspective which is that all things are just events. If I don't like the way an event has turned out, then I focus on what I would prefer instead and allow myself to be carried along that trajectory.

You can't avoid failure. Failure is a success tool. How can you ever know what success feels like if you've never experienced failure? If you are trying to avoid failure then failure will keep knocking at your door! You must welcome failure and embrace it and then learn from it. It's all perception! What's failure to you may not be failure to someone else.