Have you ever failed at anything before? An exam in school, your driving test, a college class? Maybe you failed in a new business venture or completely screwed-up a project at work. Maybe you had a major “mom fail” with your kids, or perhaps you’ve had a failed relationship or two. Maybe you are a total financial failure!

Bottom line, if you’ve ever tried something new, you’ve failed before. Failure is an unavoidable part of life.

In fact, Dani always says, “The road to success is paved with failures.” I’ve always thought that was a nice little saying to make you feel better about falling flat on your face. But, I discovered, it’s true!

I made that realization last week… after setting my oven on fire. So, I would call that a pretty big fail. Like, huge. I was making a chicken pot pie and popped the bottom crust into the oven for a few minutes before adding the filling. But, I didn’t think about putting anything under the dish. Well, a few minutes later, I opened the oven to check my crust and there was a fire in the bottom of my oven!

So, I did what I always do when I have a problem… I called my mom! It went a little something like this:

Ring ring!
Mom: Hey! Whatcha’ doing?
Me: Mom, my oven is on fire! What do I do?!
Mom: What do you mean on fire? What part of it is on fire? How big is it?
Me: The bottom! Part of my pie crust fell to the bottom and it’s on fire! What do I do?!
Mom: Grab your metal tongs and move the crust off of the heating element, then shut the oven door.
Me: (After following her instructions) Ah! Thanks Mommy! What would I do without you?!
Mom: Well, for starters, you would probably burn down your house…

I don’t care how you look at this situation… It was a FAIL!

I posted my “kitchen adventures” on Facebook that night, and someone commented: “Step away from the kitchen!”

As I read that comment, it made me think. This seems to be our approach to life sometimes. When we make a mistake, when we fail, when we fall flat on our face, we just quit. We stop trying.

But wouldn’t it be silly for me to just stop cooking or baking… ridiculous, right?! So, I mess up once and decide to be done in the kitchen forever? This line of thinking just takes you down the “this doesn’t work for me”… “I’m not cut out for this”… “it’s too hard”… “I’ve failed too many times” path. Sure, it might work for other people, but this just isn’t for me.

But the next day, I found myself back in the kitchen. I made a yummy, moist lemon pound cake with lemon glaze for my awesome office coworkers. It was perfect. My whole house smelled like lemony goodness. I was so glad I didn’t give up cooking forever!

So, why is our initial reaction to failure, to quit? Why do we give up when we run into problems?

You wouldn’t let something like a failed recipe or accidentally using salt instead of sugar or a little kitchen fire keep you from cooking ever again… so why would you let a little business failure make you quit?! Why do you let a past financial failure determine the course of your future?

Failures happen! They’re supposed to happen! The road to success is paved with failure, as Dani says.

And be on the lookout tomorrow morning, because Dani is going to dive even deeper into this topic. What do you do when failures happen? And not just a little “oops” – the big, ugly, messy failures. How do you put them behind you and keep moving forward? And how can you use these failures to your advantage? Please share your thoughts on these questions below… and make sure to check out Dani’s answers coming tomorrow!

And don’t forget to join us for The Dani Johnson Show today, where we share even more of Dani’s personally-selected tips and strategies to make your journey to success quicker and easier! You can find the show on your TV and radio and please remember you can always stream today’s show right here on our website.

To your success!

Mary Howard
DaniJohnson.com

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