Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't as all. You can be discouraged by failure - or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that's where you will find success. Thomas J. Watson

Update (Tuesday): 0. Nothing. Nada. Zip. None. Zero.

An out-of-town friend came to visit for the morning; it rained in the afternoon. Excuses. I just didn't get to it. I didn't want to get to it.

Hence, a small bump of failure to climb over. Since we're on the subject, let's define it. According to our friend Mr. Daniel Webster, to fail is to be insufficient, to perish or cease or die, to not produce the effect, to omit or neglect, to disappoint, not to perform. A very negative term, but it can help us.

I fail often in writing; that is because I set big goals and expect great performance from myself. I have an exacting standard of what good writing is; most of the time, when I read over what I have written, I don't meet my own standards. In that sense, I fail more often than I succeed.

But I also have a goal in writing which is simpler: write. Anything. Just get it on the page. And I have decided that this simpler goal must be greater than the more particular goals of writing. As much as I may fail in the detail by simply making myself achieve the broader goal, I would fail far more, in a more serious way, by letting perfectionism dictate my success.

This principle is true in almost everything we try, and is key to letting failures be helpful in our overall progress. Movement of any kind toward a desired goal is progress, even if it is not the exact movement we have envisioned. We need to set particular goals, detailed goals, and have standards; we also need to have broader points of progress in place, and accept any movement toward them as successes.

Resources: See what other people (famous people) have said about failure. Pick out a line or two that helps you keep your perspective, and write it on a card and stick it where you'll see it often.

Read an article about Overcoming Failure from Motivation-Tools.com.

WikiHow's very own instructional page on Overcoming Failure.

An article from BusinessWeek on How Failure Breeds Success. Business principles are just personal principles applied to companies. Go read it and learn something for yourself and your business.

Tip: If you keep a journal, try logging both your failures and your successes for a week or so. Compare. Many times we fail in details but we let that seem so huge that we fail to see how we have succeeded in important things. Perspective matters. Failure teaches. Success follows.