Hey, this is Richard Chansey. Welcome to the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Today, we've got a great lesson for you called redefining failure. John's going to share with you four steps to fail forward.

If you want to get the notes for this session, you can find those at MaxwellPodcast.com, forward slash failure, and just click the bonus resource button to download the notes. Now, here's Dr. John C. Maxwell.

I'm going to talk to you about character issues that come out of making the right decisions and learning how to handle failure in a correct way. Michael Jordan said it well, and he said, I can accept failure. Everyone fails with something.

For me, it's a spiritual gift, but I'll go on. He said, everybody fails at something, but I can't accept not trying. And I can sense the whole tone for what I want to talk to you about. I'm going to share with you in this lesson four steps of how to really fail forward and be successful in the process.

Number one, take action and reduce your fear. What I have found to be very true is that many times our unwillingness to take action really creates a lot of fear and causes us to dread doing something that we really ought to do. And the key character trait in this taking action and reducing your fear because people ask me, I know I ought to act on things that I don't act on.

How many of you know at least one thing that you probably need to do, but you haven't done it, and to be honest, probably it's because there's just a little bit of fear in it. We'd raise your hand. Thank you very much. We got an anonymous vote, including my hand going up to OK, we all experience that the character trait that I want to talk to you about out of this take action, reduce your fear is initiative.

I want to talk to you about initiative one of my closest friends is Dan Ryan and Dan and Patty Ryan have been with me since 1982. He just as a wonderful friend helps me a lot in my life.

But Dan and Patty about five years ago decided that they wanted to go skydiving. And so they decided they wanted to jump out of a plane and they got a group of people together. You talk about influence and leadership. They got a whole bunch of other people to jump out of a plane, not me included. I can tell you that right now.

To show you what age will do to you. That was the time when I was a kid. I thought I'd like to jump out of a plane. I have no desire to hardly walk down steps now. I mean, so it just kind of shows you where I have digress the wrong way for sure. But anyway, they get this whole group of people together. In fact, Charlie Wetzel does a lot of writing for me was in that group. And finally comes the day they're going to jump. So they're sitting together in the hangar getting ready to go up the plane. And this guy walks in and talks to all of he gives them a pitch for life insurance. If you are a little bit fearful, then guy comes and says,

how is your life insurance? And you can get a quick policy here before you go up. I think it would probably increase the anxiety. So the plane takes up to over 12,000 feet. And Wade Dan described, he said, Johnny said, you know, going up that high, that's a long way up when you're going down without a plane. He said, it's a long way up to be without having a plane taking you down. So they get up there 12,500. And they said, we were all rehearsing mentally what we had to go through. And you know, and all the things, but he said, the thing I kept rehearsing was, where's that bright orange handle? That's the rip cord.

You know, where's the bright orange? You know, forget all the other stuff. Just where's that baby? I pulled for the shoot open. And they fell. I think it was 7,500 feet because we're talking about take action to reduce your fear. And the key character issue is initiative. Here's why I'm saying that. He said, John, strange. This thing happened. He said, the moment we jumped. I had no fear. He said, for a couple of weeks before I thought, man, this is going to be tough. He said, the moment we jumped. And he said, I talked to everybody else. The moment they jumped. The fear was

reduced. And when he told me that story, I thought to myself, how many times have we dreaded to do something? Finally, we do it. And when we do it, we say, now, why was I dreading to do this? This was not any big issue in my life. I've had to happen many times in my life where I think, John, why did you keep putting this off? This was no big deal at all. In fact, when you're done, you kind of feel good about it. You know, wow, you know, then you tell the war stories. You know what I'm saying? But it's the initiative to take action to reduce your fear. And I have a question.

I have a quote in there that says success depends in a very large major upon individual initiative and exertion and cannot be achieved except by the dent of hard work. So let me give you some insights about initiative. Here we go. Number one, the majority of your fears and worries are unfounded. In fact, the best way I can describe fear. And I wrote it in your notes, because I want to make sure you had it is I think fear is the thief of dreams. I think more people lose. I think more people lose. I think I'm going to have to do it. I think I'm going to have to do it.

I've used their dream over fear than anything else. I put this quote out of Dennis Waitley's book on 10 Seeds of Greatness, but it's a study from the University of Michigan 60% of our fears are totally unwarranted. 20% have already happened. And 10% are so petty that they don't really affect our life. Now of the remaining 10% of our fears, here's what they found out the University of Michigan. Only 4 to 5% are real and justified.

And even half of those are things that we can't do anything about. This means only about 2% of our fears are something of which we should be concerned. I think it takes a lot of a fear out of fear when you realize that about 98% of things that you and I are concerned about are worried about really are things that are totally relevant to whatever the issue is. The quote here says,

My own experience has taught me this. If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races one or lasting happiness achieved. In Catherine Peterson's right, she said,

Do fears one thing to let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around as another. Okay. And that happens to us sometimes. Second insight about initiative. Not only to the majority of our fears and worries become unfounded, the second thing I know about initiative is this successful people initiate.

This has been something for the last 2 or 3 years I've given considerable thought to the quote by Orlando Baptist that said initiative is to success what a lighted matches to a candle. Okay. Good way to look at initiative. I'm reading you a paragraph from BC Forbes. Here's what he said.

American the eyes of the world typifies above all else this quality of initiative to great successes are nearly all the fruit of initiative. Why do we hold in such high esteem the achievements of the right brothers, for example, because they were illustrious examples of initiative and tenacity.

Ideas are born of initiative and children men and women they're born of initiative advancement is applied initiative. Don't imitate he said initiate. What I have found is successful people do two things really well and it's kind of interesting because these two things I find are not common companions.

I've had this discussion three or four times with friends and I've seen enough now to believe that you can go to the bank on it. Highly successful people can do two things of which I don't think they are natural. So at least one of the two have to be called evaded.

They initiate successful people initiate they can get up and do what they need to do without somebody hanging around to make sure it gets done so they initiate well but I won't tell what else they do. They end well.

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