Embrace Your Mistakes and Failures.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about the difference between failure and mistakes.

If failure is the mother of success, as today's fortune suggests, then a mistake is the father of wisdom. I know because I have gained wisdom from my most glorious mistakes—even in circumstances when success could never be present. As the president of a company, I have faced the toughest of situations where winning was not possible, and the best case scenario would be to choose various degrees of losing. When studying your losses as a business leader, you can often trace the factors back to a point in time when you first made that critical mistake. When you acknowledge ownership for each and every mistake that your company makes, you gain wisdom, which can be more powerful than success.

Mistakes and failures are similar, but are not the same. I believe that failure is the act of doing the wrong thing in the right way, while a mistake is often the result of doing the right thing in the wrong way. Thomas Edison produced thousands of failures by testing the wrong filaments in exactly the right way. In fact, he said, "I have not failed one thousand times. I have successfully discovered one thousand ways to NOT make a light bulb." Through his persistence, and vast number of failures, he uncovered success.

On the other hand, making a mistake is vastly different from failure because no matter how many times you make the same mistake, success can never be realized from doing the right thing in the wrong way. For example, your intention in giving someone a compliment will fall short if it is perceived to be delivered with insincerity. Your attempt to encourage an employee by telling them how important they are to the company can completely backfire if you mispronounce or forget their name. You may choose to give an underperforming employee a raise in an attempt to spark their potential, only to regret such a decision later. These mistakes, if you are sensitive enough to learn from them, will bring you wisdom. Unlike failures, repeating mistakes will never deliver success. Wisdom, however, will stay with you forever, while successes eventually fade.

I encourage you to get out there and claim your fair share of wisdom and success. You'll be amazed at how many mistakes and failures one can accumulate!