TM Insider: You Were Meant To Fail

You read that right!

Toastmasters is the place where it’s alright to fail.  In fact, it is the safest place for you to fail.

As quoted by Robert Kiyosaki above, you don’t achieve success without failing first.  And you need to fail fast and hard as early as possible, learn from your mistakes and come back strong.

Statistics have shown that only 8% of people achieve success on the first try without failing first.  And it is an even smaller percentage of these people who manage to retain their success.

The reason is simple – if you don’t fail, you don’t learn anything.  The people who get lucky and achieve their goals on the first try will normally not be able to sustain that success for the long term.  It is the people who have failed time and again who are the ones who go all the way.

Failure teaches us a number of things.

It tells us where we went wrong, the areas that we need to improve upon to be better.  Thomas Edison failed to invent the light bulb 1000 times.  Instead of quitting, he just said he discovered 1000 ways to not make a light bulb.  So if you are receiving a bad evaluation for your speech, listen to the points of improvement and use them for your next speech.

Failure teaches us resilience.  This is one of the most important characteristics of successful people.  This is because success is not an overnight thing but something that you have to work on continuously.  People who have never failed before don’t have the gumption to continue striving for their goals.  They give up because they feel totally defeated.  So if you feel like you are not getting to where you want to be, talk to the people in your club.  One of the aims of Toastmasters is to provide a supportive environment to nurture your growth.  Your club members are there to help you get ahead.  Get a senior member to mentor you if you need someone to point the way.  They will be more than happy to do that.

Failure also knocks down our ego, the destroyer of growth.  It reminds us that nobody is perfect, and if you think you are, you’ll never grow.  There is no room for the ego if you want to become successful, although some might disagree, saying that it is the ego that fuels their desire to become successful.  But here’s the thing – the ego also makes you afraid of failure.  Failure is never an option for the egoist and that’s a sad thing.  You have to give yourself the permission to fail.  Being too hard on yourself means you miss the learning opportunity.  The ego also makes it hard for you to work with people, which is what Toastmasters is all about.  When you join a Toastmasters club, you’ll never have to journey alone.  Club members support each other throughout their journey and share their failures and success.

Finally, failure teaches us that this is not a competition.  Toastmasters is a place where you learn at your own pace.  Want to take a break from speeches?  No problem.  Take up roles during meetings instead or volunteer to help out the club officers.  Feel stuck with your speech projects?  Talk to your club members or seniors.  They can assign a mentor to guide you but you will proceed when you are ready.  While some Toastmasters blaze through their projects, it is perfectly fine to slow down.  You are not competing with anybody and you will not benefit by trying to keep up if you don't learn anything.

A lot of seasoned Toastmasters often say that when they get a good evaluation, it’s wonderful.  But it’s the bad evaluation that they really love to receive because there’s where the room for growth come from.  And no matter how perfect you think your speech is, there is always room for improvement.

If you would like to learn effective communication skills as well as learn leadership skills that you can put in practice immediately, join us for our bi-monthly meetings on every 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month.  Please refer to our Next Meeting page for information on our next meeting or contact us directly to see how we can help you achieve your goals.