It is impossible to succeed without failures

J.K Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, spoke to the graduating class of Harvard in June 2008, said:

“You might never fail on the scale I did,” Rowling told that privileged audience. “But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.

She should know. The author didn’t magically become richer than the Queen of England overnight. Penniless, recently divorced, and raising a child on her own, she wrote the first Harry Potter book on an old manual typewriter.

Twelve publishers rejected the manuscript! A year later she was given the green light by Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, who agreed to publish the book but insisted she get a day job cause there was no money in children’s books.

The measure of success can be shown by how many times someone keeps going despite hearing only no.

Dr Jorge Martins de Oliveira writes,

“Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognise it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses.  We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colours. We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds. We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes. Colours, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, built from sensory experiences. They do not exist, as such, outside our brain. Actually, the universe is colourless, odourless, insipid and silent.”

Or as we say in NLP “There’s no failure, only feedback”