Failure Is the Path to Success

Introduction: Confronting the Fear of Failure

Today, let’s talk about something crucial that holds many of us back: the fear of failure. It’s easy to recognize when fear stops us from moving forward. Questions like “What will people think?” or “What if I fail publicly?” often haunt us. But what if failure is not a stop sign but rather an indicator of progress?

Unlocking the Power of Failure

Admittedly, accepting failure as a part of growth is easier said than done. Many aren’t there yet, including myself. However, reflecting on my own experiences, I’ve learned that failure can indeed pave the way to success.

Here’s the crux: Failure is the only path to success. Failing signifies attempting something new, pushing your abilities and knowledge to the limit. It means stepping into uncharted territories, which inevitably leads to growth. If you’re not failing, you might not be trying anything new, and consequently, stagnating. Remember, creativity is stifled by stagnation.

Failure Leading to New Opportunities

Take the example of my encounter with a publishing house. My initial hope was for a 10th anniversary edition of “Get It Done,” but the plan fell through. Or did it? My agent pointed out an interesting offer hidden in the response email – an opportunity to write about overwhelm, which led to a book deal. The failure to achieve one goal opened the door to a more fitting opportunity.

Physical Failure Transforming into Lived Wisdom

For over two years, I’ve battled long-haul COVID, affecting my energy and cognitive abilities. Energy-draining fatigue meant I had to work differently, which led to the creation of the “15-Minute Method.” My body’s limitations became my teacher, deepening my understanding and commitment to this philosophy, which transformed into lived wisdom.

Real Estate Lessons: Failure as a Catalyst for Growth

A memorable failure occurred when I couldn’t afford to buy a home in Southern California after the building I lived in converted into an Airbnb. This inability led me to an unforeseen opportunity in Connecticut real estate, ultimately resulting in a significant financial gain. Thus, sometimes failure redirects us toward unexpected benefits.

Embracing Failure as a Leader

In leadership, actively seeking situations where you might fail can keep you grounded and innovative. Being a leader often shields you from hearing essential criticism. Embrace the discomfort and vulnerability of failing to remind yourself what it’s like for those you lead and serve.

The Joy of Failing Forward

By now, I hope you’re considering embracing failure rather than fearing it. Start that book, make those videos, or push those sales plans forward. Plan to fail repeatedly at first—and that’s okay. The beauty of failure lies in the learning and opportunities that arise from it.

Welcoming Failure as a Friend

Reflect on your life. Recall moments when failure seemed certain but something beautiful emerged. Let failure be your revered teacher, guiding you to push beyond limits, fail joyfully, and persist with grace. Challenge yourself to fail more often and with less judgment, unlocking the boundless potential that lies ahead.

By sharing our failures and learning from them, not only do we grow personally, but we also encourage others to view their setbacks as stepping stones to success. Embrace failure and discover the lessons and opportunities it unfolds. Visit therealsambennett.com/practicum to learn more and sign up. Join a supportive community that will help you put consistent effort behind your dreams, providing the energy and accountability you need to succeed.

15 Minute Reset – Find Your Focus

Are you struggling to find focus, freedom, and joy in your daily life? You’re not alone. Many of us feel pulled in too many directions, struggling to make progress on the goals and dreams that mean the most to us. But what if I told you that the key to unlocking your potential lies in just 15 minutes a day?

Welcome to the 15 Minute Method

As you may know, I wrote a book called “The 15 Minute Method: The Surprisingly Simple Art of Getting It Done.” In hindsight, I now think it should be called “The Subversively Simple Art of Getting It Done,” because, yes, it is sort of subversive. Everybody underestimates it, right? But when people actually commit to it, miracles happen.

The Common Pitfalls

Many people dismiss the 15-minute method, thinking, “That’s not going to work for me,” or “I already know about that.” However, those who give it an honest try often experience daily miracles. I see countless manifestation techniques on social media—dream it and be it, they say. But here’s the truth: you manifest your dreams by doing, by taking action every single day.

Establishing New Habits

We are creatures of habit, and our habits can keep us stuck in a rut. The good news? We are also drawn to new and different things, especially when there’s a sense of urgency. Unfortunately, we often let urgent tasks trump important tasks. Another challenge we face is our need for social love and attention. We sometimes prioritize tasks that gain us approval from others over those that are truly significant to us.

Making the Change

How can we turn things around? Start by creating new, supportive habits. Make it easy for yourself to spend the first 15 minutes of the day on something meaningful—whether that’s writing, meditation, or exercise. Surround yourself with supportive people and consider joining a daily practicum. This kind of community can provide the accountability you need to stay on track.

Building Self-Love Through Promises

We all want love from others, but self-love is equally crucial. You build self-trust, esteem, and love by keeping promises to yourself. If you struggle with self-confidence or self-worth, start by committing to small, daily actions. Rack up enough 15-minute increments, and you’ll begin to notice a significant shift in your self-perception.

Your Turn: Take Action

Think of something you’ve been putting off—something that’s close to your heart. Maybe it’s a big move, dealing with finances, writing a book, or focusing on your spiritual growth. What’s stopping you from spending 15 minutes a day on this? Write down your goal and be honest with yourself about what you want.

I invite you to join me in a mini 15-minute session. Set a timer and focus on your chosen task. You may be amazed at what you can accomplish in such a short time. If you’d like to take it a step further, consider joining our daily practicum—15 minutes of focused action every weekday. Visit therealsambennett.com/practicum to learn more and sign up. Join a supportive community that will help you put consistent effort behind your dreams, providing the energy and accountability you need to succeed.

Your dreams matter, and you have the power to make them a reality—just 15 minutes at a time. Surround yourself with support, keep your promises to yourself, and witness the incredible transformations that can unfold. Let’s take that first step together. Thank you for reading, and remember: your time, your dreams, and your efforts are all incredibly valuable. Start today, and see where 15 minutes can take you.

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There Is No Such Thing as a Big Decision

There is no such thing as a big decision.

There are only little decisions.

And when you allow yourself to believe that something IS a big decision, you instantly psych yourself out, ammiright?

So you have a thought like…

“You know, maybe I want to quit this job….”

“Maybe I want to move…”

“Maybe I should leave this person that I’ve been with for all these years…”

And then you think, “Oh, but it’s such a big decision,” and you frighten yourself into inaction.

All of life is a series of little decisions, and sometimes we make a big deal about the last little decision, but really – that last one is no bigger than all the ones that precede it.

I remember before the first of my marriages (long story) when we were getting our pre-marital counseling from our very hip pastor, and he said,

“Here’s the thing – you two have been deciding to get married since you met. You have been deciding to get married since you first clapped eyes on each other. It’s been a million little steps. A million little yeses. Yes to this first date, and yes to this dinner, and yes to making up after this fight. Now, on the wedding day, we’re going to make a big fuss over this last little yes. Over this last little, ‘I do.’

But remember it is not a big decision. It is the latest in a series of small decisions. And as you stay married, you will continue to make little decisions every single day to stay married or to not.”

And anyone who has been in a long-term relationship will tell you, it’s true. You make decisions every single day to stay together, or to drift apart.

You make little decisions every day about your health, your job, your family, and your relationships, and those decisions shape your future.

If you remember that you only need to make a little decision and then take the next indicated right action, you might decide yourself into a new, better life.

Waking Up Wanting: How Doing Little Things Is the Antidote to Burnout

If you’re like me, you wake up pretty much every morning thinking about what you want.

And then you spend the rest of the day talking yourself out of it.

Or psyching yourself out of it.

Or ignoring it because you spend every waking minute doing the things that everyone else needs you to do.

Sometimes you wake up thinking of what you want in a dreaming way….with a gentle feeling of longing.

Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have my own business and not have to launch out of bed right now and start hustling for someone else…

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to take a trip – to go somewhere special….

Gee, wouldn’t it be great to be able to spend time on this hobby or activity that I love…

Other times, your desire shows up as vicious self-criticism.

Ugh. I can’t believe I haven’t done XYZ yet…

I’m such a failure – I haven’t lost this weight or even started exercising….

I feel like a loser because I haven’t written that book yet…

This early morning self-punishing is a hard way to greet the day, don’t you think?

Other times you just wake up feeling sort of dead and empty.

I don’t even know what would make a difference for me….I’m just so tired of my life….

I’m so sick of going to the same office and saying the same things to the same people over and over again…

Between the needs of my family and the needs of my job, I’m too tired to even know what I want…

And when you repeat this pattern day after day, you wind up with that horrible hamster-wheel feeling.

Because burnout doesn’t come from working hard – it comes from working hard and feeling like it doesn’t make any difference.

So the antidote to burn-out is MEANING.

And a great clue to finding meaning in your life is to look to those things you wake up wanting.

If you look underneath your feeling of dissatisfaction, you may find some interesting questions:

Where is the joy in my life?

Where is the zhuzh? The energy and sparkle?

Where is my power to change things?

These are excellent questions. You may even want to use them as journaling prompts, hm?

Let us take a moment right now to agree that this strategy of “wanting something, then not giving it to yourself all day” is not creating the life that you want.

So let’s think of a new strategy.

We’re going to do this right now.

And here’s our new, easy strategy.

Ready?

1) Pick One Thing You Want to Change

There might be several areas in your life that you want to see changed or a number of things you want to do. Since the purpose of this exercise is to explore this new strategy, I want you to just Pick One.

Pick whichever one bubbles up first for you – big or small.

OK – have you chosen an area of your life you’d like to change?

Great.

Now write that down so you don’t start second-guessing yourself before we’ve even begun.

2) Think of One. Simple. Tiny. Easy. Step.

Write down one simple, easy thing you can do today that will help you make the change you wrote down.

Simple = this step isn’t complicated; you probably already know how to do this.

Tiny = this step will take less than 15 minutes and is easily affordable or free.

Easy = you might even enjoy doing this step.

And I don’t care how dumb it seems. Or how much you feel like it’s not going to help. Because we’re just experimenting, right?

See, it’s your ego that wants to make big moves. Your ego wants to make it an all-or-nothing scenario. Your ego wants to make these big sweeping decisions.

I’m here to tell you your life will change thanks to tiny incremental actions.

Maybe your Simple Tiny Easy Action is to spend 15 minutes cruising some job websites – just to see what else is out there. (Can you see how this moves the inner conversation from, “Ugh I should really quit this job but I can’t afford it blah blah blah,” to “I’m going to just do a little check on what else might be out there for me.” Much more manageable, yes?

Or maybe your Simple Tiny Easy Action is to spend 15 minutes dancing in your kitchen, just to feel the pure joy of moving to music.

Maybe you want to spend 15 minutes writing just 200 words of a book.

Maybe you want to spend 15 minutes reaching out to a friend.

Maybe you spend 15 minutes staring at a blank piece of paper. That’s OK. A little time facing white space never hurt a person.

And here’s the wonderful news: if you do your Simple Tiny Easy Action – your whole day will be different.

It’s possible that the whole trajectory of your life will change.

But – for sure – your day will change.

3) Repeat This Process Tomorrow

And the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after that.

This is how we change our lives.

This is why I wrote the book, “Start Right Where You Are: How Little Changes Can Make a Big Difference for Overwhelmed Procrastinators, Frustrated Overachievers and Recovering Perfectionists” (New World Library).

When people looked at my life and asked me, “Wow, how did you go from being a broke actor in Los Angeles who never had two nickels to rub together to being this prosperous business owner, thought leader, and author?” (hair toss, hair toss)

It wasn’t just one thing. It was a lot of simple, tiny, easy decisions. It was a lot of simple, tiny, easy actions in a lot of areas of my life.

And it’s not just me – I’ve helped tens of thousands of clients change their lives with this process, most recently with our breakthrough 90-day program, The Get It Done Lab.

Sam’s Get it Done Lab has helped me to blow past some serious creative blocks and fall in love with the process. The process is now lifting me rather than crushing me. – Beth Jaffe

I am super excited and happy about the shift that is already occurring in me with the little I have done already and… just the basic shift in attitude…really the most important question regardless…what do I *really* want? That’s what matters. – Jodi Johnson

You can do the same. Starting right now.

Here’s the thing: Every day is precious to us. We do not know when our last day here is.

Do not wait to move forward on having the life that matters to you.

Your Overthinking is Absolutely Killing You (and what to do about it)

You have an idea that seems interesting. You might even be tempted to take action on it. But then you immediately start to reconsider. Is it actually a good idea, or just an average idea, or worst of all, a terrible idea? You begin to imagine the outcomes of acting on this idea, and all the permutations of all the outcomes. You start to envision the disappointment of having made a poor decision, and suddenly it seems much better to not do anything at all.

This is how great ideas die.

This is how Highly Creative People stay stuck.

One of the characteristics of the Highly Creative Person is a real gift for nuance and subtlety. If you are an HCP, you love intricacy, multiplicity and process, and are somewhat more likely than most to use the word “liminal” in conversation.

You read micro-expressions.
You consider your words carefully.

You notice connections between things before others have noticed anything at all.

Here’s the problem: you overcomplicate every.damn.thing.

You may have noticed yourself overthinking yourself into inaction.
You may have discovered that you overwork for no reason or reward.
You may be habitually overwrought.

And all this “over-” is exhausting for you and for the people around you.

On the other hand, you don’t want to dumb yourself down.

So what’s a twisty little brainiac like you to do?

TRY THIS: First thought, best thought.

Why this works: your processing speed is a bit faster than everyone else’s, so the thought that feels like it just popped into your consciousness has actually undergone a fairly elaborate, if invisible, process of evolution. You may not know how you know – but you know. You process information, intuition and patterns quickly, and then you are able to make connections between disparate bits of information with supersonic speed. You can trust that your body and brain have, in fact, “thought” about it for you, and have delivered a sound outcome.

If nothing else, moving forward from your first thought puts you into experimentation mode, which will lead you to new thoughts and new outcomes. Which is waaaaay better than just sitting there spinning your wheels, yes?

TRY THIS: Put it in Beta

Rather than think of every idea as a full commitment or a final decision, think of yourself as putting your ideas into beta testing. (Beta testing is the stage of software development when the creators think they’ve got something that might work, and even though it’s not near done yet, they invite users to start testing and giving feedback. So the users know they are mucking around with something that’s not complete, and enjoy the process of poking holes, finding bugs and discovering weaknesses that the designers may never have even considered.)

Beta-testing your ideas allows you to experiment with the deliberately imperfect.

To put your ideas into beta, think of the smallest, easiest component that you can put into action the quickest.

Have an idea for a class? Why not invite 3 people to coffee to talk it over?
Have an idea for a book? Go ahead and start by writing a few sentences on one index card every day for a week.
Have an idea for a new business or marketing scheme? Why not put up a teaser post on social media to gauge initial reactions?

TRY THIS: Ask someone you adore.

We all have a few smart friends whose opinion we take seriously. Why not cash in some of those Friendship Points and ask them for five minutes of their time. You can’t do this non-stop, of course, but it’s amazing how having to explain your idea to someone you respect can clarify your thinking, and how much insight a smart person can bring in just a few minutes. Be sure to offer to return the favor, of course.

TRY THIS: Google it.

I am astonished by the number of people who confide an idea to me when they haven’t spent even five minutes looking into it. Do yourself a favor and Google your idea to do a quick check on whether it’s been done before, and by whom. This is what is known as research, and it is an important part of the development of an idea.

Just because something’s been done before is no reason not to do it – quite the contrary. If someone has already proved the market for an idea, that’s excellent news. Mostly you want to know if an idea has been tried so you can learn from their mistakes and figure out how your idea is better, different, cheaper, or more interesting.

TRY THIS: Try it.

Spend 15 minutes every day for a week (a month, a year) noodling around on your idea. Let it see sunlight. See if it goes anywhere. See if you wake up thinking about it (usually a good sign) or if you don’t want to stop working on it (always a good sign). It’s fine if you play with an idea for a while and then decide it’s not worthwhile, or not the right time. At least you’ll have gotten your hands dirty and learned something.

You have some amazing ideas to offer the world – but you’ve got to stop torturing them inside of your mind and start letting them see the light of day, yes?

Want to know more about the Highly Creative Person? Take this quiz here and let me know what you think.

#theworldneedsyourideas

oh snap (or, slightly freaking out, part two)

OK, so I don’t want to get all woo on y’all, but since I wrote you last week about how shy I was feeling about putting myself front and center, the following things have happened to me:

got nominated for the prestigious Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award
booked a fun speaking gig for the Professional Photographers of America
am being profiled for a feature in Carpinteria Magazine (a small town magazine with a BIG impact because of all the tourists and celebrities who come through here : )
got an article I wrote accepted by The Good Men Project (1.8 million page views/month)
looks like the musical I wrote has a *very* bright future – stay tuned!

Now…I am not saying that proximity equals causation.

Most of the things on the list above have been in the works for some time now.

But it’s amazing how they all hit on the same week my new site went public, isn’t it?

Here’s what I know for sure:

When You Do Things, Things Happen.

Sounds laughably simple, I know.

You take an action and there’s a ripple effect. You post a photo of your new jewelry design on Instagram and suddenly someone wants to buy 30 of them. You give a talk to a room of 12 people, and afterwards, three of them want to talk to you about working with you privately. You publish a little ebook and you get offered a monthly column in an important periodical.

You’ve seen this ripple effect a grillion times, right?

But what about when you DO NOT take action?

What about when you procrastinate?
When you dither?
When you let your fear and perfectionism hold you back?

Same thing:

When You Don’t Do Things, Things Happen.

But not good things.

When you don’t show your work, you get even more nervous about showing it.
When you don’t give a talk, you become the best-kept secret in town, and your revenue drops.
When you don’t publish your ebook, all the people that you could be helping are left stranded.

And the cumulative effect of breaking your promises to yourself over and over again causes your self-esteem to wither, and your self-confidence to plummet.

(The Shame Spiral….it would make a pretty hilarious ride at a theme park, don’t you think? Floating heads chanting, “you’re not good enough!” and “who do you think you are?” as you caroom down a slippery circling slide…deeper and deeper…and then maybe at the end you get spit out on to a therapist’s office couch….#heeheehee)

Anyway –

All this is to say that YOUR PROCRASTINATION IS HURTING YOU.

And it’s time for it to stop.

Spend 15 minutes *right now* on the project that matters most to you.

Need a Little Push? Get the Procrastination Domination Starter Kit

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