Theme of Zoom Meeting

Theme of Zoom Meeting: Failure – road block or stepping stone to success?

For several questions, I have provided underlined links that will take you to related online information. Try coming up with your own thoughts first – then investigate the links or ignore them – whatever you wish.

If the links don’t work with just clicking your mouse arrow, hold down your Ctrl key as you click. Any problems with a link please let me know: rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com

Questions

1. Has a great failure in life led you to an even greater success?

2. Can failure be the key to success?

3. What has failure got to do with success?

4. How can the fear of failure prevent you from reaching your true potential?

5. Is there a success gene? A failure gene?

6. How can a parent (or grandparent) influence a child to hold onto high hopes even in the face of failure?

7. If a child grows up to fear failure, why might she probably make a poor choice as a research scientist?

8. Can you tell us about a person who reached great success only after great failure?

9. Does a person’s physical appearance increase her chances for failure? For success?

10. How might you benefit more from success than failure?

11. How can the strength to survive failure be taught in schools?

12. In the long run, can a person’s success lead to more unhappiness than joy?

13. Can failure prone students be taught ways to be successful?

14. Excluding intelligence, education, appearance, what other factors might make a person more likely to fail than succeed?

15. How can a person’s gender, race or sexual orientation sway her/him onto a failure-path?

16. What’s the easiest way to avoid failure?

17. How can business leaders avoid leading their businesses into failure? Can you modify the similar business strategies into your own personal life to make failure less likely?

18. What was a new idea generated in your mind by our discussion of failure?

Quotations on Failure

The beginning of each quotation is a link leading you to the source.

1. "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." -- Colin Powell

2. "The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere." -- Barack Obama

3. "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." -- Herman Melville

4. "The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same." -- Colin R. Davis

5. "I failed my way to success." --Thomas Edison

6. "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." --James Cameron

7. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

8. “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

9. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas A. Edison

10. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” — Truman Capote

11. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy

12. “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want” - Richard Yates

13. “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” - Denis Waitley

14. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” - Paulo Coelho

15. “A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.” B.F. Skinner

16. “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” —Denis Waitley

17. “It is no fun to fail, but you must pick yourself you and get back in the race. The only way you can grow is to challenge yourself beyond your present circumstances.” -- Les Brown

18. “Don't fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” -- Bruce Lee

19. “So start to change your mind, that a failure can be kind, if we allow ourselves to learn from it.” -- Julie Hebert

20. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing. . .but in rising every time we fall.” -- Confucius

The End