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Succeeding and Not Failing

Robert Greiner
Robert Greiner
1 min read

If asked, I would say that I devote a great portion of my life trying to succeed at something. However, when I try to be a little more introspective, I realize that most of the time I think I spend trying to succeed I actually spend trying not to fail.

This is a subtle difference that will slowly and quietly keep you stuck at good, instead of great. Some of the most interesting things we have achieved as humans were realized by avoiding the safe path and striving for success.

In the future, I want to try and move past the try not to fail mentality and focus more on what it takes to truly succeed. I'm not sure right now what this is going to look like, but I can probably measure success in this area against how many more failures I encounter.

Next time my gut tells me to hedge, I am going to take a step back and try to figure out why I'm being so conservative and what I can do to pursue success.

I'm interested to see where this takes me.

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Professional optimist. I write a weekly newsletter for humans at the intersection of business, technology, leadership, and career growth.


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