Siimon Reynolds - Why People Fail: The 16 obstacles to success and how you can overcome them

introduction

There are thousands of books on success. But very few on failure.

Yet mastering failure is surely a vital step in achieving your aims, hopes, and dreams.

After all, success is often just a momenta goal fulfilled, soon to be replaced with new goals. But failure is the ambitious persons constant companion, often dogging us for months, years, or even decades before we finally reach our aim.

We need to understand and conquer failure if we are ever to master success. Youd never know it from our education system. At school were taught geography, history, mathematical formulas, and obscure scientific facts never to be used for the rest of our lives, yet how many of us, in all our years of formal learning, were ever taught how to overcome obstacles to any goal? Surely this is more important than all the other traditional school subjects put together.

Indeed, that is precisely what this book is about. In it I explore all the main causes of failure, in any field, and reveal solutions for overcoming them and creating a successful, happy life.

But who am I to be writing about this?

IF I CAN, YOU CAN

I wish I could say I was born a success, but the truth is vastly different. I performed very poorly at school. So poorly, in fact, that I remember several times my school principal hinted that I had little future there. I recall that at the bottom of one of my end-of-year report cards he even wrote, If things do not improve, I think that Siimon had better leave the school. Ouch.

As you can imagine, those years werent fun. But looking back on them now, I see that I could have excelled in class (and had a lot of fun at school) if I had only understood the principles of success and high achievement. Its those principles that I will reveal in this book.

The great turnaround in my life came when I made one momentous decision and stuck with it. That decision was simply that I would no longer put up with being mediocre, barely achieving anything noteworthy. I decided that I would become an expert at overcoming the kind of failure that had been shadowing me for most of my teenage years.

And so I began reading. One book, two books, 10 books, over time 100 books, then 1,000 bookson how to be a better, more successful person. I read biographies, motivational books, psychology manuals, science journals, anything and everything about how the human mind works and how I could make it work better.

Slowly I began to change. Old habits lost their controlling power; new habits gradually formed. I started getting better results at work and in my personal life. As you can imagine, as I began to see tangible changes in my circumstances I became even more encouraged and excited. Could it be that my future was actually in my own hands? Was it possible that I myself could create my life, rather than blaming my situation on other people and events or just plain old bad luck?

I became totally dedicated to studying the science of achievement and the art of personal fulfillment. Im still studying success (and how to avoid failure) today, only now I have the good fortune to have made millions of dollars in my advertising career and have the freedom to do or be whatever I want.

So was I just lucky? I must say, although I have been lucky many times in my life, ultimately I think we make our own luck. At least in the long term. I believe I have arrived where I have in my career because I studied failure deeply and slowly worked out ways to get around it and clamber my way to success.

It wasnt easy. Lasting success never is. In fact, I reckon I have failed hundreds of times each year to achieve my aims. But by sticking to certain timeless strategies that I have learned from books, seminars, and bitter personal experience, eventually I have prevailed.

FAILURE LEADS TO SUCCESS

The most important message in the book is that failure leads to success. Even if you have experienced countless failures in your life, it doesnt mean you are destined to have success pass you by. If you learn the 16 principles in this book youll be able to do more than turn your life around. Youll be able to uplift and transform it, taking it to levels that will amaze and delight you.

If I can, you can. Im nobody special, but Ive learned some special techniques and strategies that Im incredibly excited about sharing with you in these pages.

Rest assuredsuccess is a science. Long term it is highly predictable. No matter what field successful people excel in, no matter what time in history they ruled, ultra-achievers have performed a certain way and thought in a similar manner. In fact, the rules of success are so similar in every field of life that many people have excelled simply by copying the thoughts and methods of other high achievers in any field. As philosophers, spiritualists, and scientists have proclaimed for thousands of years, the earth is ruled by cause and effect. As one of the basic laws of physics states, To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is an ordered world in which we live, subject to ancient natural laws. Just as there are laws of gravity, motion, chemistry, and biology, so too are there laws of success and, inversely, definite paths to failure.