I Admire Your Ability to Fail So Much and Still Be So Positive

My mother totally cracks me up sometimes. She possesses the most insane mixture of negativity and supportiveness. Seriously. She is one of the most negative people I know, and one of the most supportive. It is largely thanks to her that I am as confident as I am today, and I am forever in her debt for that. Confidence breeds happiness.

Probably my favorite thing that my mother has ever said to me came just in the last few years. I was home for a holiday and we were just hanging out. As we talked about nothing particularly important, she said (paraphrased), "You know Sean, you really amaze me. You try so many things that don't succeed, and you just get back up and start something new without hardly giving it a thought, and you are always so poitive about whatever you are doing."

Isn't that hilarious? It was like some kind of weird, backhanded compliment, but I know my mother and really all she meant was the compliment part. She admires my ability to try something, have it not work out, and just move right on to the next thing, not letting the failure of the first thing bum me out or slow me down.

That is what entrepreneurs do. We mostly don't care about failure. We know that we are going to fail, possibly even more often than we are going to succeed. The key is to learn from failure and to never stop moving, to keep trying and building and innovating. It is this process of failing and moving forward that makes it possible to do great things. Failure, in fact, us an essential part of real success.

I think that this may be one of the most important keys to long term happiness -- realizing that failure is an essential part of success and focusing on moving forward, no matter what failure or success we have. Train yourself to internalize this, to get your happiness from the process instead of the specific result, and you will be far happier than most.