Life Lessons From A Total Failure

How are we shaped by our successes and failures? Who impacts the decisions we make? And how can a book written by a total stranger help you? With candor, humor and unabashed self-deprecation, I've embraced what makes me unique and hope my story inspires you to do the same.

Things they don't teach in school ... but you'll wish they did. The late, great, personal development guru Jim Rohn lamented, "It's too bad failures don't give seminars. Wouldn't that be valuable? If you meet a guy who has messed up his life for forty years, you've just got to say, 'John, if I bring my journal and promise to take good notes, would you spend a day with me?'" Well, Jim, your wish has come true. As a time-honored expert in the art of failure, author Mark Aspelin has demonstrated exceptional skill by messing up in nearly all of the important areas of life: relationships, money, health, education, career ... the list goes on. How to Fail at Life: Lessons for the Next Generation is the ultimate "what not to do" guide, filled with stories of self-inflicted catastrophes, completely avoidable suffering, and mindless forms of life wreckage - with some inspiring tales of redemption that reveal the secrets for how to live a happy and fulfilling life. Mark wrote this book for his son, as a fun way to pass on timeless success principles, just in case Mark gets hit by the proverbial beer truck. Learn how to FAIL SMART You won't find any fancy buzzwords or "secret formulas" that are guaranteed to give you fame, fortune, enlightenment, and six-pack abs in 30 days without leaving your couch. Mark has read a bazillion books in the personal development space and quickly found that the principles of success are simple and consistent and have been documented ad nauseam. Why are the same success principles used again and again? Simple. They work. Mark has packaged these life lessons within stories of people who've learned them through the School of Hard Knocks. You'll find true, inspirational stories of failure and redemption. You'll see a few household names that you may know well, as well as some obscure and unknown names. If Mark has done his job well, you'll also see a bit of yourself in these stories. After all, that's one of the goals of this book: to give you a chance to pause, reflect, and say, "Hey, that's me!" Then you can decide if you need to make some changes to get back on track. There really is a right way and a wrong way to fail in life. For the few key areas that you want to develop and master, failure is something to be actively pursued and celebrated. It may sound strange, but when you fail fast and fail big in those few vital areas, you'll be on the fast track to accomplishing your definition of success. For the other areas of your life, the right way to fail is to let others do it for you and learn from their mistakes. Staggering amounts of time and suffering can be avoided by learning from the mistakes of others. When it comes to failure in most areas of life, it's better to watch the movie than be a character in it. Rest assured, you'll still have plenty of opportunities to fail in life, but you might as well narrow down the list so you'll fail "smart." This one's for you, Jim Rohn. Mark is happy to spend a day with you to show how failure is really done. Get ready to take some notes.

"Failure is an inevitable part of the human journey," says award-winning television and radio broadcaster and New York Times best-selling author Tavis Smiley. Smiley steps from behind the curtain of success to share intimate stories of his missteps, misdeeds, and often highly publicized miscalculations in Fail Up: 20 Lessons On Building Success From Failure. These instances of perceived "failures" were, in fact, "lessons" that shaped the principles and practices that now guide his life. Readers will find a kinship in Smiley’s humanness that inspires, informs, and reminds us of our ability to "fail up" in the face of life’s inevitable setbacks. The year-long celebration of Smiley’s 20th year anniversary in broadcasting will feature the Fail Up book tour.

Fail! And we are stamped for life. Don’t we try and run from failure all our lives? But, ‘spontaneous doing has to go through failures.’ Acknowledging failure is singularly the most difficult thing to do. It takes tremendous courage to come out and say, yes, I failed. Shweta Punj chronicles sixteen such leaders who have celebrated their failure as much as their success. Each story is an anatomy of failure. So whether it was the difference between ‘need’ and ‘want’ that led Abhinav Bindra to miss that winning shot, or whether it was a suicide attempt that pushed Sabyasachi Mukherjee into fully realizing his potential—these stories will prod you to look at failure differently.

Life Lessons from Baseball packs the adrenaline of blasting a game winnning home run with the thrill of pitching a perfect game. Each powerful story and profile of one of today's top players or hall of fame heroes will encourage you to walk with a deeper sense of appreciation of God's grace and mercy in everyday life.

Understanding resiliency and student success by studying people who succumbed to risk but later triumphed. A number of people who failed in school currently enjoy meaningful and successful lives. They include, though they are by no means limited to, those with attention and executive function challenges, learning disabilities, learning and behavioral challenges arising out of traumatic events in their lives, and even those impacted by all of the above. Up until recently, little attention was paid to successful people who did poorly in school. Why? One reason might be that many of us doubted that it was actually possible. After all, many loving parents and caring teachers spent countless hours trying their hardest to help these failing children turn things around in school, sometimes with little or nothing to show for it. If these children continued to struggle and fail in school with all this help and support, it was understandable to assume that they would not succeed in the real world decades later without it. So what did we miss? Why were we so wrong about them? And perhaps most importantly, how can their life experiences help educators and parents understand what schools can do better to support students who are struggling today? In his groundbreaking new book, Mark Katz draws on research findings in clinical and social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, education, and other fields of study—as well as stories of successful individuals who overcame years of school failure—to answer these and other questions. In the process, he shows how children who fail at school but succeed at life can give teachers and schools, counselors and health care professionals, parents and guardians—even those whose childhood struggles have persisted into their adult years—new remedies for combatting learning, behavioral, and emotional challenges; reducing juvenile crime, school dropout, and substance abuse; improving our health and well-being; and preventing medical problems later in life.