The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

August 31You Cannot Fail

You cannot put a fire out; / A thing that can ignite / Can go, itself, without a fan / Upon the slowest night. / / You cannot fold a flood / And put it in a drawer,— / Because the winds would find it out, / And tell your cedar floor.

Emily Dickinson—“Power,” The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1855)

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? Powerful question, right? (There's an Etsy print and t-shirt if you need the extra motivation.)

This question became a popular Silicon Valley start-up slogan, but its roots go back to a popular Christian televangelist from the 1970s, Robert Schuller.

But you can't put a fire out—you can't fail.

You're not your circumstances, or even your past and current experience. You are a fire, a thing that can ignite again and again.

As long as you're doing something worth doing—and you get to define “worth doing”—you cannot fail.

Challenge Question

1. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? What goals would you be setting for yourself if you knew you could not fail?