FAILING TO SUCCEED

I recently saw a Michael Jordan poster that pointed out all the shots that he had missed [thousands] including game winning shots that he missed.  It ends by saying that he failed repeatedly and that was why he succeeded. Do you believe that?  Does failure lead to success?

Right after seeing the poster, I met with one of my patients who had just been told that something he had worked on for months would have to be either redone or fixed some how so that it would work. He was discouraged and was trying to talk himself into quitting and not redoing it.  After saying this, he knew that it would not be right for him to quit and that the right thing for him to do was to keep going and make it work. He was also able to reflect on the quality of what he had completed and this helped him to make a renewed committment to keep trying.  

We then talked about the value of persistence as we may need to repeatedly do what we think is right as we run into road blocks.  My patient then wondered what else we would do besides what we felt was the right thing to do and was true to our values and beliefs.  So, what else would we do?  Is it that simple?  

So maybe failing to succeed is really persisting to succeed.  What do you think?