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When you find your comfort zone, it’s an easy place to remain. It’s familiar, cosy, and predictable.
It’s also the place where mediocrity lives. After all, as the saying goes: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.
Instead, to make progress, we must take action. We must be a little bold, a little brave, and we must step beyond our typical boundaries.
We must also be willing to take a risk in the knowledge that taking action results in both wins and failures.
It’s the speed at which we recover from both the wins and the failures that ultimately allows us to gain momentum, which is why we must win fast, fail fast, and move on quickly.
Fast failure
No one likes to fail. We don’t like it when things go awry and don’t work out as we’d hoped.
After all, it’s uncomfortable to put yourself out there and find the plan didn’t work as you imagined it would.
But you can’t win ‘em all.
When you take action and step beyond the comfort zone, a win is not guaranteed. You might fail, and if that’s how it goes, the way you handle that failure is important.
The danger of failure is that it has the potential to demotivate and stop us in our tracks.
But when we fail, we must learn from that experience, interpret it as a lesson that will benefit us in the future, and immediately move on.
We cannot wallow, we cannot have regrets, we cannot let that failure manifest as fear. Instead, we need to ask ourselves: What did I learn, what would I do differently, and now…what action will I take next?
Fast wins
It’s obvious how failure has the potential to take the wind from our sails and rob us of momentum, but the reality is that success can also have a similar effect.
The danger with wins is that they have the capacity to manifest as complacency and slow our momentum.
We can linger in the successful moment too long, basking in the achievement rather than using it to springboard into our next action plan.
When we win, we must use the result to spur on further wins. We need to let the momentum and flow work for us.
Ideally, we should learn to celebrate quickly. We need to understand that past wins are just that – “past”.
Yes, we should enjoy and capitalise on the positive energy, but then we must use it to move us closer to the next milestone.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal
As Winston Churchill once said: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
I’d go one step further and argue it is the speed at which we summon that courage and move on from either of those outcomes that matter more.
When we win fast and fail fast, we drive momentum. We keep the end goal in sight and we don’t get caught up in the little peaks and troughs that inevitably pockmark our journey.
So, no matter whether you fail or win, move quickly. Note the win, learn from the loss, but be nimble, be quick, and keep taking action.
That’s how you keep the big picture front of mind. It’s how you build resilience along the way. It’s also how you get to your destination quickly, without getting lost along the way.
Manos Findikakis is the CEO of Agents’Agency.
