Not only is failure always an option, it is often the best one. 

Weightlifters will tell you that taking sets to failure, that point where you can no longer perform additional repetitions with good form due to muscular fatigue, is the path to increased strength and growth.

Shrewd businessmen will tell you that they seldom lament the deals they didn’t do.  Rather, the ones that got away, where there was a breakdown somewhere in the process, are often saving graces.  The failure to come to terms on ill-advised transactions saving them from future losses and aggravation.

In general, failure is the spawning ground of greatness.  There would be no need to improve without first tasting its bitter flavor.  What means do we have of fulfilling true potential in the absence of the adversity that draws it out into the open?  That challenges us to overcome the dreaded specter of defeat?

Too many times in my early life, I shied away from even participating in arenas where I didn’t immediately excel.  Or more to the point, didn’t believe I would immediately excel.  I feared failure.  I feared the ultimate revelation that even my best would prove inadequate to the chosen task. 

I still do to a degree. 

I like to write.  Until a year and some months ago, it was just another curio placed on a shelf of personal regrets.  With the standard methods of attracting new business beginning to languish with the sharp market downturn, however, I was forced to step outside of my comfort zone to secure new streams of potential buyers and sellers.  I began to actually write for an audience, opening myself up to the scrutiny and criticism that I previously avoided.

Lo and behold, I found a receptive readership in addition to new business.

I temporarily failed, I adapted and I rediscovered a lost love in the process.  Now, my business is steadily picking up while that of all too many colleagues continues to stagnate.

For those who are hanging onto their careers by the skin of their bicuspids, failure may prove to be a godsend.  You can use the opportunity to refocus your practices and ultimately improve your skill set.  And if you fail completely … perhaps Real Estate is not your true calling, or at least not yet.  There is no shame in that.  Fighting and losing does not make you weak.  It just makes you a fighter.  Regardless of where your professional journey next takes you, you have earned the newfound strength that you will take with you.  You are not a failure.  You simply failed. 

Know who make some of the best coaches?  Ex-players who never made it to the bigs. 

And what of the politicos who lack the requisite charisma to be electable?  Some become the biggest power brokers in the country, if not the world.

Every failing, a new beginning.

I relate the surging failure rate in the careers of Real Estate professionals due to my own myopic perspective, but it is a universal theme that translates to the hardships that are being experienced in every walk of life with startling frequency.

With people losing houses, jobs and wealth, we'd all do well to guard against mistaking a result for an inherent truth.  Acknowledge your defeat, but don’t accept that you are defeated.  The real test, and opportunity, begins at that point.

As they say in boxing, everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face.  You only discover your true constitution upon rising from the canvas.  So get up and fight.  And if you can't defeat the opponent in front of you, you can always get a gig selling hot dogs in the stands.

Congratulations, even putting yourself in position to fail constitutes the toe in the lake that many timid souls on this watery planet will never dip.