I attended a small, local “Women in Business” meeting last week. This month’s speaker reminded me of me. She said all the same words and phrases I use in my life coaching business. She talked about accountability and setting goals. She said to view “mistakes” as a learning curve.
“What can we learn from this?” has always been one of my favorite sayings. I even had a t-shirt made with that slogan on it for a friend of mine over a decade ago. I’ve always looked at “mistakes” as an opportunity to find a new and better way to reach our goals.
The speaker also stressed that we should never give up. For most of my teaching career I used the story of Thomas Edison creating the incandescent bulb to inspire my students to “keep trying.” The story goes that Edison tried thousands of times to create the light bulb. When one obnoxious reporter asked him why he didn’t give up after so many failures, Edison replied that he had never failed. He had merely found thousands of ways a light bulb would not work.
I suppose there’s really nothing new to hear at motivational talks. Nothing we don’t already know, or haven’t heard before. So why attend them?
Because we need to be REMINDED, like the story of the little frog who fell into the pail of milk in the creamery, to “keep a’kickin.” When we do, sooner or later, just like the little frog, we will be happily sitting on a pat of butter, glad we persevered. As the speaker concluded, “Let’s all be pit bulls for success.”