Personal success secretPeople ask me sometimes, if I could give them one piece of advice that worked for me, to help them achieve personal success in their life, what would it be?

Well, today I’m going to share that advice with all of you, and I want you to write this across your chest, your face, and your bathroom mirror so you see it every single morning when you get up. I want you to write it in your iPhone, or your smartphone, so wherever you are, you remember these words. Learning how to fail is how you succeed.

I’ll say it again. Learning how to fail is how you succeed. I know, it’s a cliché. Life is full of clichés, and a lot of them are true. If you’re not willing to fail, if you’re not willing to take constructive criticism, or you’re not willing to fall on your ass sometimes, then you’re never going to achieve your goals, whether they’re personal, business, or financial goals. Sometimes I get emails from you, and they say things like, “David, you were so harsh in today’s blog. You were really tough in that new program. Did you need to take that tone?”

The answer is always yes. Because everything I do or talk about here is for the good of you. I’ve done it myself in my own life, and I know that until I accepted I wouldn’t always get things right, I didn’t enjoy the level of success I do now. A client at one of my last boot camps, used some terminology about women which I didn’t feel was right for a man of 45 years old.  He was talking about how he “wants to date nines and tens.”

I told him that was pickup language and I made him do push-ups right there on the street. I made him scream out that he treats women like numbers and objects, and that it’s wrong. Women went over and started talking to him. One woman in particular said, “You know we’re all just ones. Ones you want to be with, and ones you don’t want to be with.”

He smiled and realized he was looking at things completely wrong. In life, you have to fail. You have to go out and do the things that scare the hell out of you. It doesn’t matter if it’s approach a woman, going for a job interview, or starting your own business.

Wherever you are in life, you have to push yourself beyond your comfort zone to grow. If you’re nervous when you talk to women, you need to practice that. If you’re terrified of kissing a girl at the end of a date, line up some dates and face your fear. Create that moment with women, go in for the kiss, and see what happens. You won’t always get it right and that’s fine.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Some of you even say it in your emails. “David I’m scared of rejection. I don’t like to fail.”

If you’re afraid of failure, you’re also afraid of success, because nobody who succeeded in life got it all right first time. Thomas Edison failed at putting that damn light bulb together so many times before he got it right. How many times have people run for presidential candidate before they were elected?

When Peyton Manning loses a big game, he goes back and starts all over again. It’s the only way to do things in life. It’s the only way to live. Anyone who’s ever been great, entrepreneurs who went bankrupt and started again, people who have lost businesses and then come back stronger, they plow through it and keep going.