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Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
Glenn Mattson
Welcome back to the Building Blocks of Success. We've been talking about the attitude with regards to the success triangle, we spent some time taking a look at our belief systems and understanding that how we are wired inside of our heads really has an impact about 90% of all the decisions that we make come from our belief systems. And of course, those decisions that we make, some are good and some are bad, some have great outcomes, some don't. But again, they come from our belief systems. Then we take a look at what a successful mindset is, and how that is important to take a look at when we deal with things like confrontation, when we deal with things like roadblocks, risk, failure, etc. Having the right mindset changes your ability to handle it, to move through it and to learn from it. We also talked about living your lifeline meaning that if you make decisions, you're going to have to live with the consequences of what those decisions create. Can't be blaming the outside world, you can't be saying that it's not your fault. If you make a decision, that decision creates results creates an outcome, that is all on you. So when we take a look at the attitudinal piece, yeah, it's the fear of rejection. Yes, it's controlling your emotions and not having panic. Those are all vital, important things. Yes, we talked about how fear of rejection really has a massive impact on our ability to grow. Procrastination has a big impact, futile emotional states, which is when you don't have conviction on what to do. In a certain situations, you panic. And when you panic, your brain shuts down, and you literally get immobilized. That's why after events, sometimes after a phone call, or after a sales call, or after a meeting, sometimes you walk out saying, oh man, I should have said this, I could have said this, why didn't I say that? Again, back to emotional involvement, you had the competency of what to say, just in the heat of the battle, you didn't think of it. So all these things are true about where we are. All these things are true about who we are.
Glenn Mattson
But the building blocks of success, when we take a look at attitude is really about understanding this section today is about failure. It's very difficult with all the programming and conditioning that we have in our society. And how most of us grew up that for us to turn around and say, yeah, let's just go fail. This is great. Let me do it again and again, and again, isn't real. Most of us grew up in a society or in a household that failure is negative. If you fail, you're a loser. If you fail, you're embarrassing. If you fail, you should feel awful about yourself, which are all the crazy things that some of us have been taught. Reality is failure is a universal, it's a part of the human experience, it's important to fail. And by risking failure is really the only way that we can accomplish anything in our life. You look at it as a young child, and how they learn to walk, how they learn to stand, stand up, fall down, stand up, fall down, stand up, fall down, you don't have a eight month old or a year old, putting its head down feeling embarrassed, feeling uncomfortable, because it keeps falling over and it's trying to learn how to stand. Doesn't happen. It's learned, it's a learned trait.
Glenn Mattson
So what I want to do is spend some time with you is really looking at this thing called failure. Looking at the process that we have of failure, understanding that there's an anatomy to failure, there's a process that happens when we fail. And you have to understand what that process is. So we can learn to move through it without making really any critical decisions. So I'm going to spend a little bit of time with you today, talking about the anatomy of failure. And then from there, I want to turn and really talk about the lessons that we can gain from failure. Because there's a lot of great stuff that happens, you know, but when we take a look at really where we are and how most of us grew up, we have to start asking ourselves, what does failure mean to you? What does failure been tattooed inside your head to mean? Is it I grew up in a household and three brothers, we all played sports, a lot of testosterone and getting thrown around that place. And failure really meant that honestly that you're a loser and it wasn't a positive experience if you fail. You take a look at sports. Yeah, you fail at practice a lot, but at the end of the day, you don't want to be the one that loses the game because it's a failure. So we have this mystique that failures negative. Yet if you look at any successful individual that we may know out in the real world who has built a business, growing the business, taking it to the next level, you know all those individuals for the most part that we see and you may know about or read about.
Glenn Mattson
They have all failed dramatically numerous times. Walt Disney failed several times. He even became bankrupt on one occasion, because what he's trying to do you have individuals ready to take a look at Lincoln and how many times that he did not actually pass or succeed with regards to being voted in in office. Take a look at Edison, how often he failed over 2,000 times trying to get the light bulb right. So there's a massive amount of examples of individuals who didn't make it. I mean, look at Kentucky Fried Chicken, for goodness sakes, the colonel, he failed miserably, miserably. And is, is a small modal gas station that he had in the corner of an off ramp as he started to make his quote unquote, famous recipe. Well, when he got it figured out then all of a sudden, he started traveling around the United States trying to sell to secret recipe. It wasn't until his 60s that he actually became successful. And within 10 years, he became infamous, but 60 years of failure to get there, right. Edison failed 2,000 times before getting the light bulb, right. So hell, even Spielberg was one of the greatest directors ever dropped out of high school. So we all have failures, very successful people have bigger failures, but not always successful. So what I want to walk you through is this process of understanding failure. See, when we fail, the reality is failure is nothing more than getting an outcome that you were not hoping for.
Glenn Mattson
All it is failure is just an outcome that's different than what you were hoping for. Now, the interesting thing that I believe has happened in the last 15, 20 years, if you look at individuals 70 above 65 and above. Many of those individuals will look at lack of success in a certain area, can be something as easy as swinging a golf club, they will look at it and say I failed at I failed at blank, I failed at Y. Yet if you look at the younger generation today, in the world of psychology, we haven't been able to put a finger on why. But there's a fair amount of individuals that have converted the I failed at to now a mindset that says I'm a failure because that is a massive shift. I failed at is an external thing saying that in my role, as a golfer, I failed at swinging the club to hit a golf ball straight. I failed at, yet somehow a generation as converted a failed at something to I'm a failure because of something. How did the pronoun change to be I based, I'm a failure because X, I'm a failure because I didn't get a good grade, I'm a failure because I couldn't make the phone call. You failed at the test, you're not a failure because you got a C in the test; you failed the test. It's a big difference between the two. So as you start taking a look at the things that you're doing in your life, doesn't make a difference if it's work or personal. When something doesn't go your way, you take your personnel are you taking where you're saved yourself, I'm never gonna do that, again, that was stupid. And stop trying. That's not the right attitude. That's not the right recipe of success.
Glenn Mattson
So part of the process of the building blocks of success is to talk about what we call the barriers of success in one of those building blocks or barrier depending on how it impacts you is failure. So what I'd like to do is walk you through the anatomy of failure, it's five steps. It's really having an understanding of what happens when you fail. And if you could understand what happens when you fail, you can at least recognize where you are in the process. And you can also make sure that maybe you can speed up the process. But one of the things I want to make sure you realize is the process is going to happen. You won't not go through these five steps you're gonna have them. So the question is how do we go through faster? You know, I've been involved in a lot of coaches, programs, hell most of my athletic background in history is that we never give the recognition to the possibility of failure. We never say you could fail, you're always going to win. And that's what most motivational programs are win, win, win, win. You can do it, you can do it, you can do it. The problem is when defeat does occur when failure does occur, we're unprepared for it, and we have a tendency to deny it. So let's talk about what these anatomy are.
Glenn Mattson
The first step when we fail, right when it happens, the first step of failure is disbelief. When you try something and it doesn't happen, your mind will deny what it can't accept. The first step of failure is you're gonna be shaking your head saying, I cannot believe this was really happened to me. The most important thing that you got to make sure you do in this step, and quite honestly, in all five steps is no major decisions about your life needs to be made right now. Never make a major life decision while you're in these five steps. Unfortunately, an awful lot of people do make life decisions and business decisions, when they're in the anatomy of failure; it's the worst place to make them. So the first step, again, is disbelief; you're not going to have the capacity to handle the fact that it just happened to you. So you're when it happens in your can't really deal with it, or you're denying the existence of it, the most logical step your brain is going to do is deny it. So one of the things that we have to do inside the anatomy of failure is understand that the first step is what just happened, oh, my gosh. I cannot believe this is happening. Look at a sports team. Look at individuals that were dominating, we're doing great, and all of a sudden, they're being beaten; you can just look at them on the bench, look at their head look at their body postures. They're just sitting there saying they're in complete disbelief that this is happening. They're in complete disbelief that they're getting beaten. You can see it and their body language. So the first step is disbelief, cannot believe this is happening to me, you won't accept it. This is not occurring. Once that starts to sink in step two kicks in.
Glenn Mattson
The second step of anatomy of failure is fear. Think about it for a second, I set out to do something, I didn't do it, I failed. I can't believe it's happening to you. And then you get frightened. That is, fear is a very, very useful tool, if you actually understand it. Problem is most of us exaggerate the fear. And when we exaggerate our fear can be paralysis. It can just immobilize us, it's like quicksand. So fear, sometimes the more you try to get out of it, the more it sucks you in. But fear is a phenomenal survival mechanism that actually gets your juices going. If you allow it. Fear is a phenomenal, phenomenal place to be if you can utilize it. And so after disbelief comes the fear that this is happening, this fear can be absolutely disabling. A lot of people actually get stuck; they just can't move. Look at what happened on the pandemic for some business owners. They did not believe this was happening. Because it was happening they got they got afraid. Some people took action, some people paused, and the people that paused were because of fear. So when we have failure, first thing to say is I cannot believe this is happening, then all of a sudden, it turns into anger, you think the world is crumbling around you, and you're gonna get angry. Now you have to remember a couple things too. When we're anger happens, we have something called stamps. A stamp is I'm angry, and I don't know where to take it out, but someone's gonna get it. So maybe you heard the old kickball when you come home, or you go to the driving range and and hit some balls, you go to the gym and punch the bag, you come home and you yell at your kids or your wife or your husband for really no particular reason. Reason is you're angry. And usually, unfortunately, you focus that anger outside to others.
Glenn Mattson
So think about it, we have disbelief, then we have fear, fear turns into anger. That's the third step. I cannot believe this is happening. Now I'm afraid. And then after you get afraid to say what, and then you get angry, and that's when your juices start to flow. But when you get angry you remember more times than not that anger is externalized. So no major decisions during this time period. Right after anger comes step four. Step four is acceptance. This is important, right? I cannot believe this is happening to me. World is coming around and crumbling as you get really angry. After you have a chance to dissipate that.
Glenn Mattson
Step four comes in, which is acceptance. Acceptance is when you turn around you look at your situation and you accept responsibility for your failures. You accept where you are; you accept what you did, or didn't do that gotcha where you are. After a while your anger is going to subside. As the anger goes down, we would hope acceptance goes up. And acceptance is when you start to look at yourself and be responsible for what happened. It is insanely important. And the acceptance step. And that's really important because you want to make sure that you accept what happened, you accept what you did, you accept the outcomes, you accept it, which means you own it. So now you have responsibility, ownership and accountability to it. Successful mindset that is critical. Acceptance leads you to the fourth step, which is despair. Now you may think despair is is is an emotional inhibiting piece, it's not.
Glenn Mattson
A part of despair is really what I mean by that is uncomfortability; a lot of times acceptance and despair or uncomfortability comes together almost at the same time. Acceptance is, I understand what happened, I accept it, I know where I am right now. With despair, you have to understand with acceptance comes a little bit of a feeling of despair. Uncomfortability. And much of the time that you find in the acceptance area, again, that despair will happen almost at the same time,
Glenn Mattson
You're going to feel bad, but you've accepted the fact that you failed. And you recognized that it's time to move on. Now you have accomplished, all five steps, it happened, you cannot believe it happened, then you get really afraid that it happened. Now what am I supposed to do? I'm afraid. Fear turns into what? Now I'm angry. And you usually have an anger outside. And then once that dissipates, you take a deep breath, you accept where you are. And when you accept where you are, you're still not happy about it, you still have uncomfortable feelings about it, you still have with that, but you've accepted it and you've moved on. Now during that time period that could last 30 minutes, three seconds, or three years. So during this anatomy of failure, we have to make sure that we can speed the process up, not try to slow it down. Don't stop the fear. Don't stop the anger but accept it. But don't overdo it. So the anatomy of failure is really important.
Glenn Mattson
And one of the things I also wanted to share with you, which I think is going to be important, are the lessons that come from failure. So let's talk about that next. When we look at the building blocks of success, failure is absolutely one of the most universal things that we have. Every time you take a risk, there is a possibility of failure. Failure is one of the absolute most important things to understand what not to do, or how to get better and improve. So failure creates lessons. Lessons help us understand how to be successful. So without failure, there is no chance we're going to be successful. So what I'd like you to do is think about in your mind failure, what do you group when you grew up, what was the script you had in your head about failure? Take a look at some of the greatest movements that you've done in your life, some of the biggest jumps that you've taken some of the most satisfaction things that you've had happen to you, when you look at some of that stuff. Not all of it was sweet and roses, many of it came from failure, which made you work differently or made you work harder or change your direction on how you got there. And then you became more successful. So a lot of us have to start looking at the word no, start looking at things like no on that telephone no on sales. It's not a negative. It's just an answer. It's a word. So when you're starting to look at risking, you shouldn't be asking yourself not to enjoy failure, but never be afraid of failure. Never be afraid of trying something and not getting it right. There's only one way to figure out how to get it right is by doing it wrong numerous times until you figure it out. You gain more lessons, better growth, by not doing something right and gain the lessons from it to make sure that you understand how to do it right moving forward. So embrace failure, don't necessarily look forward and do it on purpose. Don't be afraid of failure, it still hurts, you're still going to have despair, you're still gonna have anger that happens to everybody, you can't bypass that. But what I want to make sure that you have is that the lack of or take out of your mind that failure is a negative. Honestly, failure is a great positive, none of us would be walking right now, if we didn't fail as a young child; just wouldn't happen.
Glenn Mattson
Look at all of the things that we have to do to fail to get good at it to learn how to do it, right. So embrace failure to the ability that you can ask yourself and keep putting down in front of you so you visually see it that failure is not a bad thing. You should be asking yourself every day when you go home from work, what's my lesson for the day? What's my lesson for the day? If you don't have a lesson for the day, you didn't push yourself, it didn't push yourself to be the best version of yourself. Being the best version of yourself isn't easy. Being a success, whatever that looks like for you, isn't easy or everyone would be doing it. So when you look at what you want in life, you're gonna have to take risks to get there. It's just the way it is. And you're not going to be a great risk taker if you're afraid of failure. So embrace failure to the best of your ability. Realize that some things you have to do you're not going to be good at. I was literally at a gymnastic area, picking up somebody and I see this young woman, you know, girl running down and doing one of these vaults and she ran, jump and man, she did not do it right. And she just literally, her whole body slammed against this thing. It just it looked really painful. Even from the outside. She got up, obviously there's a lot of pain. She was embarrassed, and one of her friends came over. And I could hear her say, don't worry about that. We all have done that. And you can see the difference in her face. She's still in pain. She's still embarrassed. And it didn't mean that she was a failure because she couldn't do it. It meant that she failed at doing it. That's a huge difference.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.