Martin Carter

How are those resolutions for the year going? Research suggests that by now, 4 out of 5 will have fallen by the wayside.  In my January post,  I encouraged us to ‘keep on keeping on’ in order to stop us from becoming one of the 80%.

But why do so many fail?  My belief is that it’s probably because it just wasn’t that important to us in the first place.  There’s a classic FED coaching question that asks “On a scale of  1 to 10 how committed are you to achieving this future?”  Anything less than 10 should ring alarm bells, causing you to doubt whether you want the change badly enough to do what it takes to make it happen.  Commitment is important not because it means you are more likely to succeed first time, but because you are more likely to simply refuse to accept defeat.

There’s a famous story of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb, talking with the leader of his research team after yet enough failed experiment.  The team leader said, ‘It’s hopeless, we’re never going to get this to work, we may as well admit that we have failed’.  To which Edison replied “Nonsense.  We haven’t failed once.  We’ve found 1,000 ways it doesn’t work”.  Edison’s desire to succeed meant that he saw every set-back as a positive step towards achieving his goal of inventing the light bulb.

Similarly, every time we get a set-back, we face a choice.  We can choose to beat ourselves up, seeing this latest set-back as proving what we secretly fear is true – that we are a hopeless case,  useless and incapable of change and hence we should just give up;  or we can choose to declare we have found ‘one more way it doesn’t work’ and, armed with that knowledge and experience, commit anew to achieving the change we desire.

In short, if you are truly committed to your ‘F’ then,  like Edison, your ‘failure’ might just lead to your own ‘light bulb moment’, allowing you to ‘keep on keeping on’.

Leadership nudge: Where are you unstoppable? and in what areas of your life do you refuse to concede defeat?

Martin Carter

Director of Safety, Health & Environment E.ON