There is no Such Thing as Failure

If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree. 
Jim Rohn

There is no such thing as failure. There are only results. Most of us have been programmed to fear this thing called failure. Successful people do not see failure. They do not believe in it. It does not compute. Successful people are not people who do not fail, but people who know that if they try something and it does not give them what they want, they have had a learning experience. They use what they have learned and simply try something else. They take new actions and produce new results. 

What is the one benefit, the one asset, you have today over yesterday? Experience! Some of you have not previously experienced a vicious bear market. Some of you, old enough, have experienced more than one bear market, and the action we see is not new. We have learned from the past, from our experiences. We do not fear the bear, but we respect him. People who fear failure make internal representations of what might not work in advance. This is what holds them back from taking the action that could ensure the accomplishment of their goals. Failure is something that is just not perceived by people who achieve. They do not dwell on it. They do not attach negative emotions to something that does not work. 

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt." William Shakespeare 

Winners, in the market and elsewhere, understand that if you try something and you do not get the outcome you want it's simply feedback. You use that information to make finer distinctions next time. That's why we analyze our investments, both good ones and bad ones, to make finer distinctions on what went right and what went wrong. It's feedback for next time. We learn from our successes as well as our failures. Buckminster Fuller wrote, 

"Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes." 

And I might add the mistakes of others. 

Take a minute to reflect on the five greatest so-called "failures" in your life. What did you learn from those experiences? Chances are they were some of the most valuable lessons you have learned in your life. Treat your trading in the same way, failures are merely feedback, lessons to be learned for finer tuning the next time.