Hero (32 page)

JOHN PAUL DEJORIA

A hindrance to anyone being successful is when there’s rejection they give up. One of the keys to becoming successful at anything is to be prepared for a lot of rejection, and don’t let it affect you. A lot of people aren’t prepared when they start something, and they figure they’re a failure and it stops them. If all these rejections didn’t happen, I could never have started John Paul Mitchell Systems.

Failures & Mistakes

“We make mistakes. It wouldn’t be any fun if we didn’t make mistakes. If I went out and played golf and every one of the eighteen holes I hit a hole in one, I wouldn’t be playing golf for very long; I mean, you have to go into the rough occasionally to make the game interesting. Not too often though.”

Warren Buffett

Business Magnate and Investor

LAYNE BEACHLEY

If you take the time to reflect back on some of your so-called failures and mistakes, or setbacks and disappointments, you realize they are all necessary parts of our journey.

PAUL ORFALEA

How does a baby get up and fall down? That takes a lot of guts. The whole process of going from zero to five has a lot of obstacles. But you learn from your mistakes.

LAIRD HAMILTON

You have to be willing to subject yourself to failure. I know that for me the greatest lessons come from the failures not from the successes. That’s what leads us closer to our dream.

If you haven’t acquired the necessary qualities of discernment or good judgment to realize your dream, failures and mistakes will ensure you develop them. You could put your trust in something because of what someone else said, and it fails. You could make a decision without thinking things through and find you’ve made a big mistake. When you reflect back on the failure or the mistake, however, you might see there were red flags or warning signs you ignored that were telling you something wasn’t right. In other words, you ignored your intuition.

LAYNE BEACHLEY

Mistakes are really a learning opportunity, and the only mistake is not learning the lesson the first time. And the great thing about the Universe is it’ll keep providing you with the same lesson until you learn it.

You might see that you needed to do your own research and not trust in other people’s opinions so blindly. Or you might see that you needed to think things through more carefully before taking a big action.

“I learned more from the one restaurant that didn’t work than from all the ones that were successes.”

Wolfgang Puck

Restaurateur and Businessman

G. M. RAO

We must celebrate failures, for they arise out of action and therefore become the greatest grounds for learning. And we must concentrate on that learning so that mistakes do not get repeated. To encourage new ideas, new approaches, experimentation, and innovation, a mistake should not be censured.

When you take responsibility for your failures and mistakes, without blaming anyone else, and you look for the lessons hidden within them, they become powerful tools for your advancement on the Hero’s Journey. Mistakes and failures are inevitable; whether you extract the magic they contain is up to you!

LAIRD HAMILTON

There’s a formulaic process. First you have to believe that it’s possible. Then you have to be willing to fail; you get back up and do it again, and pretty soon you’re like, “Wow, I’m going.” And then, “I’m getting a little better,” and then, “I’m good at this.” Pretty soon you’re at the top, and then you realize it wasn’t about getting to the top, it was about that process. And you get addicted to the process of it.

Miracles

PETER BURWASH

I have been very grateful for the moments that have happened, and realized that we’re not that independent. We’re very dependent, not just on oxygen but on good fortune, good timing, and other people.

There may be trials on the Hero’s Journey, but you’re also going to experience the miracles that happen along the way. In truth, the miracles far outweigh the trials. From my own experience, the magic and miracles that happened while I was on my way to my dream were
as
thrilling as the realization of my dream. When the Universe starts lining things up for you in a way that no human mind could ever do, I promise you, it will take your breath away. You will ask time and time again, “How did that happen?!”

LIZ MURRAY

I was sleeping on the streets, and I used to shoplift; not the best habit in the world, but I needed to eat. I also used to go to Barnes & Noble and shoplift self-help books, and I would read them in the stairwells. Then my story spread and I got a call from this Stephen Covey company. I went out and I spoke, and it took me until I was standing in front of him to realize that I had stolen his book. I had to tell him, “I shoplifted your book.” And he told me it was on the house.

Liz Murray was just eighteen years old when Stephen Covey asked her to share the stage with him to tell her story. That day proved to be a miraculous one in Liz’s life, because it set her on a path of public speaking to share her story and inspire others. Liz went on to write her own best-selling book, and to share the stage with people such as Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, and Tony Blair.