Thoughts on: Jordan
Michael Jordan is arguably the best basketball player in history. At the height of his fame he was known in every remote corner of the world, and he raked in hundreds of millions in endorsement money. Yet I think one of his quotes has impressed me more than any of those statistics. Jordan was unafraid of failure – yet, by his own admission, he failed again and again and again.
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” - Michael Jordan
When most people speak of goals, they speak of positive goals. It is much better to have a goal stated as “I will lose 10 pounds” rather than “I will deny myself food and burn more calories than I take in for several miserable weeks.” Jordan really got to the heart of the matter. He never let the last missed shot affect his concentration on the next one. He was willing to take the chance, willing to fail.
If you have played sports of any sort, you know this is no small achievement. I played tennis and I raged at myself after every botched return or double-fault. I didn’t understand that failing is part of succeeding. I thought that a failure was a shortcoming. I never learned to analyze my failures and turn them into strengths. Rather than analyzing a botched backhand to reconsider my approach to the net, I cursed my racket. When I missed the game winning shot I raged. Jordan forgot and moved on, which is one reason (among thousands) that he is an internationally-known sports legend and I am not.
I think of this quote in terms of personal finance. I make mistakes in personal finance. I make a bad investment, or a foolish purchase or miss an opportunity for additional income. Yet the only way that’s truly a failure is if I don’t build on it, understand why it happened and use that knowledge to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Jordan knew this, and that’s why he succeeded.
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Great quote. Jordan had the gift of being able to learn from mistakes to become a better player. Truly a great talent! Just keep a baseball bat out of his hands.
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When I saw this in my RSS reader I honestly thought it was about this Jordan …. I need to stop reading British tabloids ….
Very true. Jordan was “the man,” by the way. I had the luck to see him play basketball once against the Houston Rockets (Jordan, Pippen, Rodman) vs (Olajuwan, Drexler, Barkley). It was like watching an all-star game!
I also saw Jordan play minor league baseball when I lived in Alabama. I don’t know very many people who have seen him play both sports live.
Before Jordan, there was Thomas Edison. It took more than 3,000 attempts to find a filament that would work in the electric light bulb. His quote, similar to Jordan’s, is this:
“Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward…. “
In one hand you’re saying to forget the mistake and move on, in the other hand you’re saying analyze the mistake to improve upon it. There is a fine line there.
@Investing911: there definitely is a fine line between the two. You have to analyze, learn and then move on without dwelling on it.
@Ruth: What is a light bulb compared to the ability to put an orange ball through a hoop?
@Guiness416: I’m sure there are one or two interesting lessons you could draw from THAT Jordan, too…
Very nice article. I vaguely remember seeing a commercial where Michael Jordan says that quote and you see him failing over and over.
When I first started in the stock market, I did horrible. I lost a big chunk of my portfolio in the first year. It was devastating, but I told myself if I don’t learn from these mistakes and don’t give up, that I can be successful. The next year I made up all the losses and was beating the indexes.