Ryan Leak - Chasing Failure: How Falling Short Sets You Up for Success

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Ive encouraged leaders for decades now to fail early, fail often, and to make sure you always fail forward. And what I love about Ryans book and story is he has found a way to make failure enticing enough to make people take steps theyd never dream of taking. The principles and values outlined in this book are essential for a leader to grasp.

John C. Maxwell

Author, speaker, and leadership expert

Chasing Failure lends its readers a perspective that allows them to see the obstacles in their story as opportunities to grow. Ryan Leak continues to figure out ways to help people win when they feel like theyre losing.

Sam Collier

Lead Pastor of Hillsong Atlanta

One of the most powerful things we can give the next generation is believing in them even after theyve failed because belief is what helps them get back on their feet again. Its imperative for every parent, educator, coach, youth worker, and youth pastor to read Chasing Failure because students need Ryans positive perspective, especially when theyre experiencing setbacks.

Tim Somers

Youth Pastor at Elevation Church

Failure is inevitable in life. Learning from those failures is vital to your success. Ryans book embodies that message, and its one many more need to hear.

Kevin Paul Scott

Speaker and author of The Lens: Nine Shifts in a Leaders Perspective

2021 Ryan Leak

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Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.

Author is represented by the literary agency of The Fedd Agency, Inc., P. O. Box 341973, Austin, Texas, 78734.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021904666

ISBN 9780785248361 (hardcover)

ISBN 9780785248385 (eBook)

Epub Edition April 2021 9780785240891

Printed in the United States of America

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To my beautiful wife, Amanda, I dedicate this book to you.
Its difficult for any person with a dream to accomplish
much without someone in their corner to believe they can
touch the sky. I feel like the luckiest man in the world
because youve been that for me since we first met. I told
you about a dream on our first date and told you how
scared I was. You responded, Its not scary. Its fun. You
changed my mind about going for the impossible, and
because of you, Ive been having fun facing my fears.

Almost everyone knows that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. But most dont know that Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper for a lack of ideas, and his first cartoon production company went bankrupt. Everyone loves Lucy, but Lucille Ball was told that she had no talent and should leave Murray Andersons drama school. With all of Dustin Hoffmans success, its hard to believe he worked as a janitor and an attendant in a psychiatric ward because he failed in his first attempt as an actor in New York.

Can you imagine Bob Dylan getting booed off the stage at his high school talent show? Its also hard to fathom Steven Spielberg not getting accepted to UCLA film school because of average grades. And its easy to forget that Steve Jobs was fired from Apple at thirty years old and Oprah Winfrey was once told she wasnt fit for television and was fired as a news anchor.

The fact is, everyone fails in life, but it is a gift if you dont give up and are willing to learn, improve, and grow because of it.

Failure often serves as a defining moment, a crossroad on the journey of your life. It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment, and dedication. Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity... or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down?

Failure provides you with a great opportunity to decide how much you really want something. Will you give up? Or will you dig deeper, commit more, work harder, learn, and get better? If you know that this is what you truly want, you will be willing to pay the price that greatness requires. You will be willing to fail again and again in order to succeed.

On the other hand, sometimes failure causes you take a different path that is better for you in the long run. When I lost my race for city council of Atlanta at the age of twenty-six, I realized that politics and all its negativity wasnt for me. This set me on a new course and ultimately led me to move my family to Florida and find my purpose of speaking and writing (now with more than twenty-three books published, with multiple bestsellers impacting millions of people around the globe).

Sometimes we have to lose a goal to find our destiny. Sometimes a failure helps us see what we really dont want and that we want something else.

Whatever path failure guides you toward, it is always meant to give you a big serving of humble pie that builds your character, gives you perspective, grows your faith, and makes you appreciate your success later on.

If you didnt fail, you wouldnt become the kind of person who ultimately succeeds.

And thats exactly what Ryan Leak shows you in Chasing Failure: how to embrace failure, use it, and make it your friend instead of your foe.

The next time you fail, dont let it keep you from the life you were born to live and the future you were meant to create. See failure as a test, a teacher, a detour to a better outcome and an event that builds a better you.

Failure is not meant to be final and fatal. It is not meant to define you. It is meant to refine you to be all that you are meant to be.

When you see failure as a blessing instead of a curse, you will turn the gift of failure into a stepping-stone that leads to the gift of success.

Jon Gordon, 10-time bestselling author of The Energy Bus and The Power of Positive Leadership

You dont have to be great to get started, but you do have to get started to be great.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

What do you want to be when you grow up?