It’s said 70% of people who become real estate professionals leave the business within 2 years. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, this statistic has much more to do with the way these people think than any lack of talent, education or training. In this article I’ll discuss how the way one thinks about failure is just as important as how they think about success.

Many people think any sort of failure in life should be carefully avoided, and if it can’t be avoided, it should immediately be put behind us and never discussed. Another pervasive illusion is success comes from avoiding failure. The fundamental error of these views is viewing failure as a bad thing. It isn’t a bad thing! Changing your view on failure is a key to achieving great success.

Abraham Lincoln had a great deal of failure in many areas of his life. They were:

- 1832 – Failed In Business – Bankruptcy
- 1832 – Defeated For Legislature
- 1834 – Failed In Business – Bankruptcy
- 1835 – Fiancée Died
- 1836 – Nervous Breakdown
- 1838 – Defeated In Election
- 1843 – Defeated For US Congress
- 1848 – Defeated For US Congress
- 1855 – Defeated For US Senate
- 1856 – Defeated For US President
- 1858 – Defeated For US Senate

Lincoln must have viewed failure in a positive light. After being defeated 6 times for political positions like Lincoln was, if you didn’t have some perspective on the value of failure, wouldn’t you and most people have given up? Yet in 1860 Lincoln achieved the pinnacle of success in US politics – he was elected President of the United States. Among the US’s 44 presidents Lincoln is usually considered the greatest of them all for his leadership during the American Civil war and his powerful speeches.

Lincoln is only one of many shining stars who endured a great deal of failure first. Thomas Edison claimed his first thousand attempts to invent the light bulb had failed. Henry Ford failed and went bankrupt 5 times before making Ford Motor Company a iconic automotive company. Babe Ruth spent his childhood years in an orphanage and, as a baseball player, struck out 1,330 times. He also hit 714 home runs in his career, a record that stood for nearly 40 years, and is considered the greatest baseball player in history in various surveys and rankings. Elvis Presley was banished from the Grand Ole Opry after only one performance and told: “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son.” Presley and the Beatles are the only artists in history to sell a billion records worldwide.

We learn the most from our failures, more so than from our successes. If we keep trying and keep failing, we still keep learning important, unforgettable lessons that better equip us to succeed the next time. We grow the most when we learn the most, so if we think about our failures as opportunities to grow, our whole perspective on failure changes. As long as we remember this and that success is the inevitable result of persistence, we’ll be encouraged to keep trying when our morale is down. We only truly fail when we surrender and quit.

Learn more about the power of attitude and positive thinking in my course Excelling In The Real Estate Profession. This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 9 credits.