Failure happens to everyone. Goodness knows I've fallen on my face often enough. Every so often I try a plan I think is a slam dunk, trip, and wind up kissing dirt. I feel so low I wonder if the world will end, or if the ground will split and swallow me whole. Then I get over it, dust myself off, and try again.

The popular (and wholly incorrect) wisdom is that successful people are 'lucky' or 'born to it'. The whole world of success is supposedly a world of Paris Hilton variations. Yes, a few people are born to wealth, and manage to be successful for doing nothing. But you don't build giant companies from scratch, overcome poverty by your own diligence, or create legacies this way. So, what makes successful people successful?

Among other things, successful people know how to handle failure. They fall down as well as anyone else. It's what they do next that makes the difference. Most people make excuses, which is a common reaction and the one most likely to destroy all their efforts. To succeed, you recover from your failures, find out what you did wrong, and then learn from it.

Do you think the big players in business never make mistakes? No. The big players learn from their mistakes. The big players overcome their mistakes, their failures, and their bumps. It's one of the big reasons they're big players in the game, because they can do what most cannot: learn and recover from failure.

If you fail, use it. You failed because we're all human and failure happens. It's no more complicated than that and isn't a reflection on you. It's only going to hurt you if you say something like 'it's such-and-so's fault this happened' or give in to self-pity. Dust yourself off, make yourself feel better, then find out what went wrong and learn from it. This will give you a building block to your desired result, which is success.

Good luck to you in your endeavors. You can succeed if you remember that with failure, it's what you do next that matters.