Success is just failure. . . Recycled!

"I recycle."

"Good for you," you might say. "It's great to keep those water bottles and batteries out of the landfills. I recycle too."

"Do you?"

"Umm, yes. Haven't you seen that tiny garbage can in my office? The one that has 'I made this much garbage' stenciled on it? I really do that."

If that's you, keep up the great work! Saving the planet is a very noble cause, but it's not physical waste that I'm talking about here.

What do you do with your disappointment?

Do you bury frustration deep inside when Jack, the office grandstander, steals your well-deserved promotion? What about when those nay-sayers mock your dream to build a waterpark in the backyard?

I've been there and done that. Not anymore. I've decided to follow the examples of the people mentioned below. I'm going to take all of that emotional garbage and recycle it into a can-do attitude.

What about you?

Oprah Winfrey

After being fired for failure to control her emotions, Oprah went on to create one of the most popular talk shows in history and her own production company.

Walt Disney

Today the name Walt Disney conjures up images of Mickey Mouse, amusement parks and family fun. This was not always so. Failure after failure drove this icon to an emotional breakdown in midlife. He developed the habit of quiet reflection which lead to new ideas and the result is what you see today.

JK Rowling

Despite the death of her mother, divorce, and raising her child in poverty, the creator of "Harry Potter" rose from the ashes and became a best-selling author. There was no magic to her success, just plain old resilience.

Thomas Edison

Have you ever tried to do something 10,000 times? That's the number of tries it took for Edison to finally light up that bulb. When asked by a newspaper reporter if he felt like a failure and if he should give up, after having gone through over 9,000 failed attempts, Edison simply stated “Why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitely over 9,000 ways an electric lightbulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp.” Teachers once labelled him as "too stupid to learn."

Apparently, he "failed" to live up to their standards when he patented 1,093 inventions

in the U.S.

Replace all negativity with these attitudes:

Do you believe in your passion? Don’t give up.

Is your idea great? Keep going.

Can’t find the right market placement? Build it.

Can’t get to the right people? Think of something different to open doors.

Failed again? Revise it. Learn from feedback and make it better.

Our modern culture has an underlying belief that failure is the expectation and belief that failure should equate stopping. Success is the exception.

The accumulation of failure equates growth. We become wiser, smarter and braver each time we fail.

Who are we kidding? Failure hurts. The victory lies in picking yourself up and

foraging ahead with a new perspective, some well-earned knowledge and a thicker skin. Embrace each failure. You may be closer to success than you realize.

Define your own meaning of success.

Then shoot for the stars, wiping the stardust off along the way.