Day 5  – Don’t worry about making mistakes or not acting until you can do it perfectly,  focus on any small changes you can do NOW.    It really is that simple. You need to know that that failure and mistakes don’t define you, but it propels you onto bigger, better things. You will be knocked down, you will be beaten, and you will make mistakes. Guess what successful people call that? Growth. No one succeeds without experiencing those three things.

Don’t believe me? “I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say I discovered there are 1000 ways that can cause failure” — Thomas Edison

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that… is why I succeed.” — Michael Jordan

Steve Jobs, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our era, created one of the greatest companies of our era, Apple. He was also fired from the very company he created (and then later rehired and led the company to a level of success even he didn’t dream of). During his time away from Apple, he owned two other companies, NEXT and Pixar. He almost single-handedly ran NEXT into the ground. His vision for the company wasn’t the vision the market had or wanted. Luckily, he was convinced to make a pivot and pursue a different market.   He also almost single handedly ran Pixar into the ground. If it wasn’t for two of his closest employees at the company who convinced him to focus on cartoon animation, Pixar would not be the wildly successful company it is today (and we wouldn’t have Toy Story, Monster’s Inc, Up, etc). And when reporters would ask Steve about the “dark years”, he’d confidently tell them those failures during that time directly led him to his success at Apple, turning it into one of the greatest entrepreneurial stories of all time. Failure didn’t define him. It propelled him.

So go forward LeapStars and make mistakes, let them make 2013 your best yet by Growing from what you learn 🙂 Smiles & hugs and happy NEW YEAR xx