“Everyone has talent,” says Jong. “What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”

You can have all the courage in the world, but it’s useless if you don’t know what you want out of your job and life! To enhance your mind-body connection, read Find Your Inner Voice: Using Instinct and Intuition Through the Body-Mind Connection. And, here are seven steps to tuning in to your inner voice…

How to Use Your Instincts to Succeed – Erica Jong

1. Listen to your physical body – pay attention to stomachaches, headaches, etc. Give your body a chance to voice its opinion as you think about your job responsibilities, interactions with clients, communications with coworkers. Pay attention to your physical energy every time you make a decision at work. Do you feel calm or excited or lethargic? Listening and responding to the cues your body is sending doesn’t just improve your mind-body connection, it can help you solve work problems.

2. Consider your personality traits. Succeeding at work involves factoring in your personality and preferences. Do you like to work on your own thing, or do you thrive in a group of colleagues? Do you operate best in the morning, afternoon or evening? You’re more likely to be successful at work (and enjoy your success!) if you work with your natural style and rhythms — not against them. Use your instincts by writing down the top five characteristics of your ideal job. Don’t think; just write.

3. Be realistic about your current life and work goals . Do your plans to succeed at work jive with your home situation and lifestyle? For instance, if you need to take care of young children or elderly parents, then you might not be able to put a full-time effort into starting a new business. Are you relocating, changing jobs, going back to school, or dealing with a health issue? Listen to your gut instincts: you may not be up for a particular task or career move just yet. But, don’t give up hope. Just thinking about your future success can help you succeed.

4. Take career risks, and acknowledge your efforts. To succeed at work, you need to take risks and reward yourself no matter what the outcome. A career risk can be as little as speaking up at meetings or as big as applying for a new leadership position in your company. Maybe work success means solving problems with coworkers or learning to read nonverbal signals from your boss. What do you want out of your career — and what are your instincts telling you? Learn to take risks by taking risks…because as Erica Jong says, “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”

5. Evaluate what works for you. If you keep track of what is already working for you at work, then you’ll be more likely to handle difficult coworkers or challenging assignments. If your instincts are whispering about fear, self-doubt, or uncertainty, then take action. For instance, you may need to take smaller steps, resolve fears by talking to your boss or colleagues, or get admininstrative or managerial support.

6. Adjust what doesn’t work. If your instincts are telling you that you can’t complete a certain task or achieve a particular goal at work, then adjust your course. This is another way for your mind-body connection to jump in: listen to your inner voice tell you what’s not working, and then ask it to help you find what will work. Remember that all your experience and effort still counts…and you’re just tweaking your action plan!

Using your instincts at work is about empowerment!  ”Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame,” says Erica Jong.

If you have any questions or thoughts on using your instincts to succeed at work, please comment below…

Related posts:

1. Overcoming Shame and Guilt – Erica Jong
2. Increase Your Creativity and Fire Up the Muse – Erica Jong
3. Overcoming Shame and Guilt – Erica Jong

About success, McEntire says, “Be different, stand out, and work your butt off.”

Allowing yourself to be different and stand out is more difficult than working hard, but authenticity offers rewards that hard work doesn’t. To learn how to work smarter and reveal your authentic self, read Lois Frankel’s Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers – she’s written several fantastic books in the “Nice Girls” series. And, read on for ten ways to succeed at work for women…

10 Ways for Women to Get Ahead at Work – Reba McEntire

1. Give yourself permission to move from girlhood to womanhood. Do you sometimes feel like a young girl even though you’re a grown woman? Frankel says, “Tell yourself that you are not only allowed, but entitled to act in ways that move you toward goal attainment.” To get ahead at work, take control of your education, professional development, and career choices. Own your age!

2. Ask for professional feedback. If you’re concerned about your job performance, ask a trusted colleague for feedback. In Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, Frankel suggests asking an open-ended question, such as: “Tell me what I did in that meeting that helped me or hindered me from achieving my goals.” Negative feedback can make you a healthier, more well-rounded woman — so don’t be afraid of it.

3. Know the rules of the game at your workplace. Workplaces have spoken and unspoken rules, and women need to know what they are. For instance, is it taboo to go home before 4 pm? Can budgets be flexed, or must they be strictly adhered to? The more you know which rules can be bent, the farther you’ll go at work.

4. Don’t take slights, criticisms, or mistakes personally. If you’re taken to task because of a mistake at work (real or perceived), don’t take it personally. Imagine you’re protected by a Plexiglass shield; you can see out, but negativity and criticism can’t touch you. To succeed at work, don’t retreat after making a mistake.

5. Build solid professional relationships. “If you’re not spending 5% of your day building relationships, you’re doing something wrong,” says Frankel. Since women are generally very good at building relationships, this is an easy way for us to succeed! Unless, of course, we’re coping with negative or bossy coworkers.

6. Speak up when people delegate inappropriately to you. Learn how to say no and recognize inappropriate delegation at work. Practice saying “no” unapologetically: ”You know, I’d love to help you out with this but I’m just swamped.” Then, stop talking. Here’s how Reba McEntire puts it: “To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.”

7. Prepare requests in advance. If you’re asking for a new client project, a job promotion, a raise, etc., make sure you rehearse in advance. When you ask for anything at work, be direct, straightforward, and accompany each request with two or three legitimate reasons why you should be given it.

8. Embrace – don’t avoid – office politics. Office politics, according to Frankel, is simply about going out of your way to help someone and give them what they need. In return, they’ll do the same. Understand that professional relationships have a built-in quid pro quo. To take it a step further and learn to read nonverbal signals from your coworkers.

9. Ask for introductions. To get ahead at work, speak up when you want to meet a potential or current client, the president of the company, or the boss’s husband! The more you ask for referrals, phone numbers, and sources, the easier it’ll get.

10. Don’t let your emotions dictate your responses at work. “When people get annoyed or angry with us, it’s often for the purpose of getting us to do what they want. Don’t fall for the ploy,” writes Frankel. To succceed at work, let go of your need to be liked and your fear of confrontation. Let people be annoyed with — or even mad at – you.

One last inspiration from Reba McEntire:

“Growing up is not being so determined to make everybody happy.”

If you have any thoughts or questions on these ways for women to get ahead at work, please comment below…

Related posts:

1. 7 Ways to Overcome Procrastination at Work – Sarah Ban Breathnach
2. Reading Nonverbal Signals From Your Co-Workers or Boss – Esteé Lauder
3. 6 Steps to Solving Almost Any Work Problem – Helen Gurley Brown

First, a quotation from successful businesswoman Martha Stewart:

“Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success.”

Since your thoughts turn into reality, remember to focus on ideas that strengthen, uplift, and inspire you — and be open to new possibilities and opportunities! For help starting a homebased business, click Start and Run A Business From Home: How to Turn Your Hobby or Interest Into a Business. And, read on for five hobby ideas that became careers…

5 Female Entrepreneurs Who Turned Their Hobbies Into Into Careers

Do you already have a business idea or hobby you love? Read For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business for tips.

1. More than a biker chick: a published author. Babs Ryan started the Chicago Motorcycle Meetup four years ago. ”I’m a 49-year-old woman who turned my hobby into a job, and then back into a hobby again,” she says. “I started riding motorcycles at age 21 in grad school for fun, on a trail bike riding in the desert in Arizona.  I became the chief marketing officer at Kawasaki in the UK; two years ago, I started a motorcycle club in Chicago called Chicago Motorcycle Meetup. It grew to 180 members in three months. I’m still riding, but I had to hand over managing the club to someone else because my business book, America’s Corporate Brain Drain, was published and I needed more time for marketing.”

2. Leaping into the wild unknown. Tai Kuncio, founder of Absolute Adventures, Inc, says, “My business partner and I have been running Absolute Adventures, Inc for almost nine years now. We started the business because we both love being active in the outdoors and wanted to take that passion and turn it into a way of making a living.  Our company offers fun outdoor events on the weekends, ranging from kayaking to hiking to sky diving.  We actually get paid to do all the fun things we’d be doing anyway!  We also offer a wide variety of unique team building events to corporations all over Northern California, ranging from high-tech scavenger hunts to sailing regattas to culinary events.”

3. “Wining” her way to success – and writing a book. ”I turned my love of unwinding with a great glass of wine into a career,” says The Wine Coach® Laurie Forster. “With the help of my life coach, I left the corporate world years ago in search of a career that I could be passionate about. Now as The Wine Coach®, I blend my training as a professional sommelier with my experience as a life coach to help people connect to wine, each other, and the things that bring them joy. I wrote my first book, The Sipping Point: A Crash Course in Wine.” 

4. Making jewelry out of science. Raven Hanna, PhD, started Made With Molecules. She says, “My hobby has become my career – and now I need a new hobby! Working as a scientist and science communicator, I was always making crafts on the side. After many comments from friends and strangers that I should sell my serotonin necklace and other molecule-inspired jewelry, I started Made With Molecules.  I never imagined that it would be so successful. It’s now my full time job, and I love it!” Marrying science and artistic creation is a great hobby idea that can become a successful business – if you have an open mind.

5. Greening the baby’s food. Connie Pope, co-owner of Jack’s Harvest, explains how she became a female entrepreneur: “My good friend Heather Schoenrock loves to cook and has always made organic baby food for her children.  She had her third child, son Jack, around the same time I had my second son, Avery. I don’t even like to cook dinner so I wasn’t making my own baby food, but I wanted Avery to have the healthiest food possible.  Since Heather was already making her amazing food for Jack, I offered to pay her to make Avery’s food too. One thing lead to another and three years ago we launched Jack’s Harvest!”

For more ideas, read Turning Hobbies Into Homebased Businesses – Stories From Female Entrepreneurs.

Do you have a hobby you love — and can you see yourself making money from it? I welcome your comments below!

Related posts:

1. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know
2. How to Make Your Business Successful: Find Your Personal Advantage
3. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business

“No one ever said that starting a business was easy,” writes Stewart in The Martha Stewart Rules (10 Essentials For Achieving Success As You Start, Build, Or Manage A Business). “The reality is that companies, even the largest and most well known, falter not once, but many times.”

If you’re a female entrepreneur, you need to know how to bounce back from failure – and not let setbacks become obstacles. Here are Martha Stewart’s tips for business startups; if you want to learn more from Stewart herself, click The Martha Stewart Rules.

For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business

If this article isn’t quite what you’re looking for, try When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know.

1. Build your business success around something you love – something inherently and endlessly interesting to you. So, write the book you want to read, bake the cakes you want to eat, and sell the clothes you want to wear.

2. Focus your attention and creativity on basic things, which people need and want. Then, look for ways to enlarge, improve, and enhance your Big Idea. For instance, my Quips & Tips for Achieving Your Goals seems to be evolving into a site about love relationships in particular, not goals in general. So, I may enlarge my basic idea (a blog about goals) into an enlarged, more specific website about relationships. That’s what readers seem to need and want!

3. Create a business plan that allows you to stay true to your Big Idea, yet helps you focus on the details. Remain flexible enough to zoom in or out on the vital aspects of your enterprise as your business grows. Martha Stewart’s third rule for starting a business involves a telescope (to look ahead), a wide-angle lens (your business’ environment), and a microscope (the details of your business).

4. Share your knowledge about your product or service with customers to create deep connections. Don’t just sell your product or service: help your customers or clients by teaching them, getting to know them, and asking for ideas or feedback.

5. Use smart, cost-effective promotional marketing techniques that will arrest the eye, tug at the heart, and convey what is unique and special about your business or service. Martha Stewart uses the example of Madge (a manicurist) selling Palmolive dish soap. She adds a personal touch to a mundane household product. When starting a business, female entrepreneurs need to find their own touch.

6. Put quality at the top of your list of priorities, and keep it there. Quality is something you should strive for in every decision, every day. This means striving to be your best self – even in the details – when you’re starting and running your business.

7. Seek out and hire employees who are brimming with talent, energy, integrity, optimism, and generosity. Search for advisers and partners who complement your skills and understand your ideals.

8. When faced with a business challenge, evaluate or assess the situation, gather the good things in sight, abandon the bad, clear your mind, and move on. Focus on the positive, stay in control, and never panic. For more info, read Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs.

9. Remember that in business, there’s a difference between a risk and a chance. A well-calculated risk may very well end up as an investment in your business. A careless chance can cause it to crumble. When an opportunity presents itself, never assume it will be your last.

10. Listen intently, learn new things every day, be willing to innovate, and become an authority your customers will trust. As a female entrepreneur, you will find great joy and satisfaction in making your customers’ lives easier, more meaningful, and more beautiful.

“When work is based in passion, it does not feel like work – it feels fulfilling and empowering, far more about creating, building, devising, initiating, leading, and serving than simply moving through one task and on to another,” writes Martha Stewart.

If you want more info on any of these tips for female entrepreneurs, please let me know below! I’d be happy to write another article, explaining any of Martha Stewart’s business rules in more depth…

Related posts:

1. Martha Stewart – Bending Steel With Her Mind
2. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know
3. The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel

In The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel, I described how finding your personal advantage or strength can set you apart from the masses of entrepreneurs or career women. Here, I share examples of innate advantages or personal strengths so you can see what I (and Garrison Wynn!) am talking about.

“Lots of people ignore their innate advantages because they can’t see how it delivers a professional edge,” writes Wynn in The Real Truth about Success:  What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won’t Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway! “An innate advantage is anything that you possess naturally that can help you succeed.”

Click on his book to learn more about how to succeed in business and relationships. And, read on for several examples of personal advantages that will make your business successful…

Types of Personal Strengths or Advantages

The willingness to be honest and vulnerable. Oprah Winfrey is a hugely successful female entrepreneur who shares most aspects of her life, from her struggles with her weight to her difficult relationships with her family members. Her millions of viewers and fans relate to who she is because she’s real. Her honesty and vulnerability makes her likeable. But not every businesswoman can – or wants to be – that open with their clients or customers. 

The ability to connect with people. I admire those female entrepreneurs who can connect easily with others (aka “networking”) – because it really is who you know that helps your business succeed. “The people you need to help you make your dream come true are everywhere, and within your reach,” says motivational speaker Marcia Weider. If you think you can’t network, read Networking Tips for Introverts – you’d be surprised at how easy it can be!

Physical stamina and determination. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that hugely successful people put in 10,000 hours of practice before they hit the big time. Bill Gates logged thousands of hours as a computer programmer, the Beatles sung in dozens of dingy nightclubs, and Stephen King wrote legions of bad stories – and they all became wildly successful. A key to their success was the ability and willingness to keep practicing even when they were tired or felt like giving up. For more keys to success from Outliers, read Tips for Achieving Your Goals.

Access to resources: time, money, institutions. Family wealth or fame is a personal advantage that can make your business successful – and there’s nothing wrong with tapping into it! Perhaps that’s part of Maria Shriver’s success. I don’t have access to family wealth, but I can afford to focus on building my freelance writing and blogging career from scratch without worrying about money because my husband makes enough to support us. At first, this made me feel uncomfortable – but not anymore! Now, I am grateful for this opportunity to build my business. I now see it as a personal advantage that I’d be foolish to ignore.

“The idea that we all have to be a certain way or equally gifted or equipped is ridiculous,” writes Wynn in The Real Truth about Success. “Certain jobs or roles require a dominant set of skills or attitudes balanced by almost a complete absence of another set.”

There are many, many more innate abilities that will help you succeed! If you want to read another article with more examples, please let me know below.  I’d be happy to.

If you have any examples of how personal advantages can make your business successful – or questions - please comment below…

Related posts:

1. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know
2. From Hobbies to Careers – 5 Ideas for Turning a Hobby Into a Successful Business
3. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business

Coco Chanel – who created Chanel No. 5 perfume, bell bottoms, and the little black dress – was a successful businesswoman who had her own formula for success. Here’s what she said:

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” – Coco Chanel.

She thought for herself, and she wasn’t afraid to say what she thought. And she probably said the wrong thing occasionally. She was human. But she also forgave herself (if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have succeeded the way she did!).

This key to success for female entrepreneurs are based on The Real Truth about Success:  What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won’t Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway! Click the cover for details – Wynn is a funny, smart writer – and read on for tips businesswomen…

The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel

“We’ve been fed ideas about what it takes to succeed our entire lives, and we’ve eaten them up,” writes Wynn. “In many cases, though, we would be better off chewing them up and spitting them out.”

I won’t go into the wrong keys to success (though if you want me to, I will! Wynn’s wrong ways to succeed are very interesting…just comment below if you’d like me to write about them).

Instead of the usual keys to success, Wynn describes the key to success.

“Although wildly successful, the use of a personal advantage as a get-ahead tactic remains relatively unexploited by average U.S. businesspeople,” he writes. “And yet top performers are nothing more than average businesspeople who have discovered their secret advantage and leveraged it to reach new heights.”

The key to success for female entrepreneurs (and other successful women) is to find your personal advantage.

An example of using this key to success:

Paris Hilton decided she wanted to be more than a rich girl; she wanted to be famous. So, she hired paparazzi to follow her, snap photos, and publish those pictures of her. She used her personal advantages – money, appearance, love of the spotlight, shamelessness – to become a household name.

I’m not saying we should aspire to be like Paris Hilton, my friends. Nor am I saying we need money or elaborate exploits to get ahead. We just need to identify what our personal advantages are – our strengths – and use them.

Paris Hilton used what she had to become a highly successful woman on her own terms. And, her definition of a highly successful woman is different than my definition of a highly successful woman – but she achieved her goals. You gotta admire that.

Coco Chanel’s Personal Advantage

Coco was into fashion, clothing, elegance, and long-term style. Her key to success as a female entrepreneur was her focus on classic wear. Her designs had staying power. Her personal advantage was her tendency towards comfortable, casual, easy clothes – like the little black dress, which is still popular today.

“I don’t understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little – if only out of politeness,” she said. “And then, you never know, maybe that’s the day she has a date with destiny. And it’s best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.”

Coco Chanel’s personal advantage was that she cared about her appearance, and she wanted other women to look and smell good. (Hmmm…is this a personal advantage, or is it just a passion?)

What’s Your Personal Advantage?

What sets you apart from the crowd? Think outside the box: what qualities do you have that other people don’t?  Think of things like how you once turned failure to success or how you changed careers. Your personal advantage is your key to success; you need only find and nurture it.

My next article here on See Jane Soar will list examples of personal advantages – some of them will surprise you – and describe how to nourish and use them.

What do you think of this key to success for female entrepreneurs? I welcome your comments below…

Related posts:

1. Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Maya Angelou
2. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business
3. How to Make Your Business Successful: Find Your Personal Advantage

“I believe in businesses where you engage in creative thinking, and where you form some of your deepest relationships,” said Anita Roddick, creator of The Body Shop. “If it isn’t about the production of the human spirit, we are in big trouble.”

For more info about how Roddick started The Body Shop, read Finding the Right Timing in Life – Anita Roddick. And, click on The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business for specific tips for successful businesswomen.

When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know

1. Believe in yourself. Your clients immediately know if you believe in your service or product, and they’ll assess you and your product or service accordingly. Tap into — and express! – your passion, integrity, and vision, and you’re more likely to be a successful businesswoman.

2. Gather a great team. When you’re starting your own business, don’t try to do everything yourself, even if you’re a freelance writer who works alone (like me!). If you can’t surround yourself with a smart, motivated team of employees or colleagues, then find a mentor. Soak up insight, feedback, and criticism from other successful businesswomen.

3. Leave your ego out of your new business. Your ego wants to keep you in control, make you look good, and manipulate people. Your ego wants to protect itself at all costs, and it doesn’t like vulnerability or rejection – which is part of starting your own business. Ignore your ego and focus on win-win situations for everyone. Speak up when necessary, even when you feel uncomfortable being in the spotlight!

4. Realize the value of failure. Successful businesswomen don’t escape failure. Successful businesswomen realize that success teaches more than failure, and that failing is a great opportunity to figure out how to do it better, or faster, or more efficiently. To learn more about what successful businesswomen know, read Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Maya Angelou.

5. Don’t give up yet! Starting a new business can be hard, and many entrepreneurs quit because finding clients is harder than they thought, they feel discouraged, they lose hope, or they no longer believe in themselves or their product. The longer you persevere, the more you improve your chances of starting a successful business. “A writing career is nothing more than a long series of disappointments punctuated by occasional moments of success,” says Michael Bracken. Successful businesswomen know that this isn’t just true of writing careers!

6. Stay organized. Staying organized not only shows your clients what a great businesswoman you are, it makes you feel strong, motivated, and capable. If you get rid of clutter, do things immediately, learn to say no, stick with your routine, and prioritize your goals, you’re more likely to start a successful business.

If you have any tips on starting your own business, I’d love to hear from you! Please comment below…

Related posts:

1. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business
2. From Hobbies to Careers – 5 Ideas for Turning a Hobby Into a Successful Business
3. How to Make Your Business Successful: Find Your Personal Advantage

“You did what you know how to do. When you knew better, you did better.” – Maya Angelou.

Bouncing back from failure involves accepting that you did the best you could at the time. When you know better, you do better…and the key is to learn from your business failures! One of my favorite books on turning failure to success is When Smart People Fail – click the cover for details. And, read on for specific ways to turn failure to success for female entrepreneurs…

Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Maya Angelou

“Failure is a cleaning of the house,” writes Linda Gottlieb, co-author of When Smart People Fail. “It’s an opportunity to reorient your career, to inspect it, to relabel it. You learn to keep all your options in play, be light on your feet. Surviving failure makes you bold…Failure liberates you and gives you the courage to risk in a big enough way to guarantee big success.”

Research shows that female entrepreneurs are risk takers and less cautious by nature. Female entrepreneurs are optimistic but not always resilient — which is a shame, because bouncing back from failure may be the biggest predictor of success in business, relationships, and life.

Get real about failure. Failure isn’t a fatal flaw or social disease that renders you helpless and unhappy. Female entrepreneurs know that failure is not a permanent condition. Failure doesn’t make you less worthy, less intelligent, or less capable. Failure isn’t who you are….failure is simply an event.

Stop, take a deep breath, and think. After you fail, figure out exactly what happened. Did your business location lead you to bankruptcy? Were you fired because you weren’t focused? Be honest and specific. To turn failure to success, identify your mistakes and take responsibility.

“If you don’t like something, change it,” said Maya Angelou. “If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

Regain control. When you know what went wrong, be deliberate not to make the same mistakes. Female entrepreneurs aren’t doomed to repeat history unless they’re oblivious! To regain control, determine what you did right and what worked in the past.

Also — remember that timing is everything. To learn how successful businesswoman Anita Roddick created the Body Shop, Finding the Right Timing — Anita Roddick.

Connect with other successful female entrepreneurs. Talk to women in business who have survived similar situations. Find out what worked. What would they do differently if they knew then what they know now? Compare stories. The more you hide your failures, the worse you’ll feel; so, be honest about your weaknesses and regrets. Not only is this emotionally healthy, it could open doors to new opportunities.

Adjust your perspective on failure. “I actually consider my failure to become a feature film director as the beginning of what I consider a saner and more successful life,” says award-winning Hollywood director Bert Salzman. “After winning the Oscar, I had visions of going right to the top, and when I didn’t get there immediately, I began to reconsider my life.”

Turning failure into success can be as simple as stepping back, looking at your life objectively, and realizing that failure doesn’t define you.

Work it, baby, work it! To turn failure into success, recycle your skills and talents. Reuse or re-label your abilities by breaking down the elements of your previous work into small, definable skills. Look at yourself differently – through the eyes of a stranger – and don’t be ashamed to share your hidden talents and abilities.

Failure can teach you compassion and humility. Failure can offer you a new sense of power and a different way to connect with the universe – if you let it. For more info on bouncing back, read 5 Ways to Build Resiliency – JK Rowling.

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’ ” – Maya Angelou.

If you have any questions or thoughts on turning failure to success, please comment below!

Related posts:

1. The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel
2. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business
3. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know