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Glenn Mattson
Welcome back, Building Blocks of Success. Last session, we just talked about failure and the importance of failure and why we need to understand failure as important as a process to learn. We also went through the four steps and five steps excuse me of failure, taking a look at it, the first step always is despair; I cannot believe this is happening to me, which leads right into fear. Right? Right. When you say this can't be happening to me, almost always, I am afraid kicks in, then all of a sudden when you think the world's crumbling around you, you're gonna get a little angry. And after you get angry, and time goes by, you get into the fourth step, which is acceptance, you start to accept the responsibilities for your failures, or to accept the decisions or lack of decisions that you made that got you where you are, which then leads into a little bit of despair; you feel bad, that about it, but you've accepted the fact that you've moved on.
Glenn Mattson
What I would like to talk about today, in this session, which I think is really important for all of us, is understanding the lessons of failure. The lessons of failure are quite a few, we're going to talk about a handful of them. But as we go through this, I want you to take a look at really from where you sit, how can you start to learn? How can you gain? How can you get to the next level yourself on a professional level on a personal level, when it comes to failure getting outside your comfort zone, the likelihood of us growing and getting to the next level is almost zero, if we don't have the comfort, and the ability to understand that failures, okay.
Glenn Mattson
So let's talk about some of the things that happened and the lessons that we can get from failure. So after you have a chance to fail, and remember, you have to go through the five steps, one of the lessons that we find is you have a better understanding of yourself.
Glenn Mattson
If you're really objective about it, and you really look at it from an outside standpoint, you're going to learn a great deal about yourself, and really what's going on and how you got to where you are.
Glenn Mattson
So one of the great lessons is you start to understand yourself, if you can be a third person about it, you really step back and do a step by step analysis of really what happened. And what are the thoughts or decisions that you had that created those outcomes.
Glenn Mattson
It's a profound lesson, you really have to take a look at it. Almost like a third person sitting there staring at what you did or didn't do what you said or what you didn't say. And taking a look at it, it's not easy, it's stressful. It's hard to be a third person to your own self. But you have to learn how to evaluate yourself. You have to look at yourself as a tool. It's not easy, it's gonna be a little bit painful in the beginning. But if you exhibit the responsibility and the willingness to learn from failure it's a great place to do it. So understanding yourself, be objective.
Glenn Mattson
Take a look at it again. Ask yourself really simple questions. What did I say that I shouldn't have done? What did I do that maybe I shouldn't have done?
Glenn Mattson
Maybe what did I not say that I was supposed to say?
Glenn Mattson
What didn't I do that I should have done? You really gotta look at yourself. So the first lesson that we can get, which is huge, is understanding more about yourself.
Glenn Mattson
The second lesson that I found that happens from failure is an absolutely fantastic time to really take a look at yourself and change your attitude. Now that you've done a diagnostic in essence of understanding yourself, you have to kind of understand what you did that failed. What did you do that got you in the situation that you're in?
Glenn Mattson
If you believe that change is necessary, you've learned a ton around decision making. And that's really our second lesson. We adopt new mindsets, new attitudes towards decision making and the risks that come with it. So when we make decisions, and we do things or didn't do things, and we have failure, it is a great time to look at our decision making and its inherent risks with the decisions that we made or didn't do or didn't make, that got us there.
Glenn Mattson
So if you have a process where you failed and you learn from the failure, you have learned a ton about your decision making. So one of the great lessons is you have the ability to adopt new mindsets towards decision making. Maybe for instance, I remember early on, I would be somewhat hesitant, was called for what it was, I would wimp out, and certain key questions I had to ask during the sales call.
Glenn Mattson
When I found myself not making the sales, because I wasn't asking those key questions, the lesson of failure became very quickly. If I choose to wimp out, and I choose not to plant my feet and ask the right questions, I'm not going to get the answers that we need to qualify someone, closer.
Glenn Mattson
So when you look at this, that's the decision making that we're talking about, you start to ask yourself is, if I keep doing what I'm doing, where am I going to end up? Is it worth it? Do I have to change some of the things I'm doing about myself or my decisions or my thoughts?
Glenn Mattson
You may also start to find out real quick that even some of the people maybe that you're hanging with, some of the individuals that are helping you make these decisions are impacting your decisions. Maybe you're not the right people to be with.
Glenn Mattson
You know, my grandpa was always used to say to me, if you want to be an eagle, there's no way you can hang out with a bunch of turkeys. You got to start asking yourself is are your decision making helping you or as a decision making that you're having hurting you?
Glenn Mattson
Let's go to the third lesson of failure.
Glenn Mattson
So the third lesson of failure is that we have the ability to reprioritize, reorder, redefine what we think is priority. A lot of times when we fail, it makes us adopt or take a look at is that really important to us? Was I was fighting for is that critical in my life? Is it worth it?
Glenn Mattson
You also understand that your needs and your wants and what the differences are between those two. Meaning that when we take a look at our needs and wants, are they real? Is this something we're willing to fight for? Is this something that we're willing to get outside of our comfort zone for?
Glenn Mattson
You know, a lot of us will have ideas and goals of what we want to become and who we want to become. So when we have pretty hardcore failures, it does make us look at our priorities, to identify, are they accurate? Are they true? And for most people that are wildly successful and have that passion in their belly, it does reorder some of their priorities and actually fuels develop a fire in their belly.
Glenn Mattson
See when I'm talking about failure team, trying to make sure we're on the same team and on the same page with this. I'm not talking about individuals that are okay, being not okay. I'm not talking about individuals that blame everything and why they're not successful. I mean, I'm not talking about those people. I'm also not talking about the individuals that no matter where you put them in the world, you put them in a helicopter, you throw them into any part of the world, they will be ultra-successful. I'm actually talking about the normal human being; the individuals that walk the planet Earth, go to work every day, that are trying to figure out how to become better than they are right now.
Glenn Mattson
So those individuals sometimes have to reorganize their priorities; what is more important to you? So you know, for instance, I remember when I was in college, and I was trying to hang out with the seniors as I was a freshman. Hang out, the seniors do what they were doing, stay out as much as they did. And I found myself doing the best I could to keep up with them, but as keeping up with them, school, personal life, other things were starting to lack and being impacted. So I had to turn around and make some decisions about what was really important to me. Being part of the team, definitely important to me. But was it really important to be out at three o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday afternoon at a pub, just because one of the seniors was?
Glenn Mattson
So I asked myself, What is the priorities that I had? Was it trying to be their friends, or is it being the best defenseman, I could on the team? So reordering your priorities helps you understand what's really important to you. And is what you're doing going to get to where you want to go?
Glenn Mattson
I also remember, way back, when I first got started in my career, I could have worked in Connecticut, and I could have worked in Long Island. All my friends were in Connecticut, that's where my life was. I played flag football on the weekends, lacrosse during the week, coach my brother's high school lacrosse team. I had a lot of stuff going on, but all that stuff was also distractions. And what I mean by that is, is that if I wanted to be successful, I had to get away. And I wasn't necessarily strong sometimes to make the right decisions in the wrong environment, so I changed the entire environment.
Glenn Mattson
And that was my priority, being successful, getting to the point where I could provide for my future wife, my wife now. Having the ability to stand on my own two feet, having the ability to buy our house, first house, having the ability to do those things was not going to happen where I was. I had to change my priorities.
Glenn Mattson
The next lesson that you're going to get from failure is strengthen your gut system. Yeah, you have to understand about yourself, you're going to learn to adapt new ideas about decision making, what's important to you? When do you want to get things done? The risking that happens when you take and make decisions. It also helps you reprioritize what you think is important, and what you're willing to fight for?
Glenn Mattson
When I talk about reorder your priorities, I'm talking about what are you willing to fight for? What are you willing to pay the ferry man for? What are you willing to be ultra-committed towards? And when we fail, sometimes those change, they reorder, and change the order of priorities.
Glenn Mattson
The last one is failure with regards to the lesson, is it really helps you strengthen your gut system. And this is the one I love the most. When you fail, you can sit on the curb and suck your thumb and feel sorry for yourself and have everyone around you feel sorry for you and start to be right, that scenario, or you're gonna get up and go on with your life. If you get up and go on with your life, you go to the next phase. You can't fail quick enough and fast enough if you have the ability to bounce up and keep moving. When you get up and move, you're gonna get tough. And when you get tough, that's what guts is all about. The toughness.
Glenn Mattson
When you find out you're not going to die because someone hangs up the telephone on you. When you find out that the world's not going to crumble because that large case that you thought was going to come in didn't come in. When you had that great employee of yours decided that they were going to leave the firm. All these things that happened to you and your life, strengthen your gut system.
Glenn Mattson
But I want to make sure we're on the same page here. I'm not saying that I want you to fail. I'm not encouraging failure, but for goodness sakes, I do not, I never want you to be afraid of failure. You have to have the belief that failure is going to happen in my life. Failure happens, it has a value as a learning device. It has a value to help me become better.
Glenn Mattson
So what we really want to do and strengthen your gut system, that if we use and understand failure, and if we interpret it correctly, we can gain massive lessons from failure. Ones are not going to deter us from our goals, but rather, failure is going to help us get to our goals faster.
Glenn Mattson
So, if you look at some of the things that you've done in your time period, that's helped you get to the next phase. I remember I had my relatively large case, one of the biggest ones that my time in my career, I thought I had this thing buttoned up, it was fantastic. Went down major presentation. All my advocates loved it. The CEO, to that day in my career, said some of the harshest things I've ever heard. It crushed me. I went through the steps of failure for sure. Although when I started to get my guts system was I didn't die. The life was still around, my dogs still love me, my wife still loved me, I still had a job, the lights still came on in the kitchen when I turned them on.
Glenn Mattson
And more failures help you create and become tougher. Because when the failure happened, you took a real hard look at yourself, you became gutsier, you became harder, you had a stronger guts system, which means that you understand more about yourself now. You understand more about failure now and now you understand that you can take risks. You understand what happened to get you where you are. You understand what you didn't do that got you where you are. You understand that, for instance, your fear of rejection is got you where you are. And if you don't change your fear of rejection, how are you ever going to get better? So having the strength to change your gut system is really important when it comes to failure.
Glenn Mattson
You strengthen your gut system is letting you know that what it did wasn't right and what it did happen because of a belief that you had. And we need to get rid of that belief. So, you know, some of the things in your guts system may be is there is no tomorrow, why wait tomorrow, do today, if you can. Maybe it's the fact you're gonna learn how to plant your feet and ask some tough questions. If you really want to get to that next level in the sale. Maybe it means that you have to plant your feet, and not accept mediocrity from you or anyone else around you.
Glenn Mattson
Strengthen your gut system is a heck of an outcome from failure.
Glenn Mattson
So when we look at failure, we've gone through the anatomy, right? Disbelief, fear, anger, acceptance, a little bit of despair. You have to remember the lessons that come from it. You're going to learn to understand yourself, you've got to be really objective about what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and own it. As you start to learn more about yourself. When you do that you start to understand the decisions that you made or didn't make. And you start to understand the risks that come from making decisions or not making decisions. And that helps you reorder your priorities. What's really important to you? What are you willing to fight for? And all of that helps you strengthen your gut system.
Glenn Mattson
And that guts makes you more courageous. Courage is critical. Sometimes we have to have the ability to believe in ourselves to take the leap of faith and not worry about the consequences of the outcome.
Glenn Mattson
So when we look at failure it's just an outcome that is less than we were hoping for. If we are afraid of failure, you won't take as many risks. If you don't take the risks, there's no chance in growth.
Glenn Mattson
Next class next session of Building Blocks, we're gonna be talking about risk taking. What is it? Understanding risking, understanding how to make risks, understanding how to maximize your risk taking. We're also going to be taking a look at with that is understanding that when we do risks, what are some of the things that happen when we take risks? But realize we won't be a great risk taker if we're afraid of failure. Failure is universal happens to all of us happens every day, all day. Some are big failures. Some are small failures.
Glenn Mattson
If we look at failure as a negative, and we run from it, we will run from breaking outside of our comfort zones to become our best version of ourselves. When you are uncomfortable inside your body, when you have anxiety inside your body that is telling you that you're getting to the close side of your comfort zone. The reason you're feeling uncomfortable, the reason you're feeling that way, is because internally, you're getting outside your comfort zone and your body doesn't like it. So it's trying to convince you to stay where you are. Your body likes the way you are. Your mind likes the softness or the lack of toughness that you are right now. It's easier to manipulate and handle it.
Glenn Mattson
So break through your failure. Learn every day, what is your lesson? Every day, you should be asking yourself, what did I learn today? What can I do better? What can I do more? What can I do different? That'll help you overcome your fear of failure.
Glenn Mattson
Practice it a lot. If you look at individuals, doesn't make a difference if it's sports work, something as easy as socializing, how about dating? Individuals that are afraid of failure have a very difficult time. So take a look at it. Learn your lessons. Never make life decisions when you're going through the five steps in the anatomy of failure. Remember you fail at things. You're never a failure because of things. You failed at them. Look for your lessons, change your attitudes and move forward. We'll talk to you next session when we take a look at risk taking.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.