Abraham Lincoln demonstrates this in a rather dramatic fashion.

1816: His family was forced out of their home.

Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas, had owned farmland in Hardin County, Kentucky, since the early 1800s, and he left Kentucky and moved his family across the Ohio River to Indiana in 1816 for two primary reasons:

• Kentucky was a slave state, and Thomas Lincoln disliked slavery – both because his church opposed it, and because he did not want to have to compete economically with slave labor.
• Kentucky had never been properly surveyed, and many settlers in the early 1800s found that establishing clear title to their land was difficult. Thomas Lincoln (and other farmers in the area) were eventually sued by non-Kentucky residents who claimed prior title to their lands.

With plenty of land available in neighboring Indiana, a territory where slavery had been excluded by the Northwest Ordinance and the government guaranteed buyers clear title to their property, Thomas Lincoln opted to move rather than to spend time and money fighting over the title to his Kentucky farm.

1818: His mother died.

Lincoln’s mother, Nancy, did die in 1818, when Abraham was only nine years old. A mother’s death is a tragedy for any child, and it was a special hardship for a struggling farm family.

1831: Failed in business.

Lincoln left his father’s home for good in 1831 and, along with his cousin John Hanks, took a flatboat full of provisions down the Mississippi River from Illinois to New Orleans on behalf of a “bustling, none too scrupulous businessman” named Denton Offutt. Offutt planned to open a general store, and he promised to make Lincoln its manager when Abraham returned from New Orleans. Lincoln operated the store as Offutt’s clerk and assistant for several months (and by all accounts did a fine job of it) until Offutt, a poor businessman, overextended himself financially and ran it into the ground.

1832: Ran for state legislature – lost.

Lincoln finished eighth in a field of thirteen (with the top four vote-getters becoming legislators). However, this same year Lincoln also achieved something of which he was very proud, when the members of a volunteer militia company he had joined selected him as their captain. Lincoln said many years later that this was “a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.” (He also noted later in his career that his defeat in the 1832 legislative election was the only time he “was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people.”)

1833: Borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business and by the end of the year he was bankrupt. He spent the next 17 years of his life paying off this debt.

Lincoln and William F. Berry, a corporal from Lincoln’s militia company, purchased a general store in New Salem, Illinois, in 1833. (Lincoln had no money for his half; he didn’t technically “borrow the money from a friend” but instead signed a note with one of the previous owners for his share.) Lincoln and Berry were competing against a larger, well-organized store in the same town; their outfit did little business, and within a short time it had “winked out.”

The debt on the store became due the following year, and since Lincoln was unable to pay off his note, his possessions were seized by the sheriff. Moreover, when Lincoln’s former partner died with no assets soon afterwards, Lincoln insisted upon assuming his partner’s half of the debt as well, even though he was not legally obligated to do so. Exactly how long it took Lincoln to pay off this debt (which he jokingly referred to as his “national debt”) in its entirety is unknown.

1834: Ran for state legislature again – won.

In 1834 Lincoln was again one of thirteen candidates running for a seat in the state legislature, and this time he won, securing the second-highest vote total among the field.

1835: Was engaged to be married, sweetheart died and his heart was broken.

Much of Lincoln’s relationship with New Salem resident Ann Rutledge, remains a mystery, and several aspects of it – including whether or not they were actually engaged (at the time they met, Ann was betrothed to someone else) – are based more on speculation than documented fact. Whatever the exact nature of their relationship, however, her death in the summer of 1835 appears to have affected Lincoln profoundly.

1838: Sought to become speaker of the state legislature – defeated.

By the time of the 1838-39 legislative session, Lincoln had twice been an unsuccessful Whig candidate for the position of speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. This was a relatively minor political setback, however, and no mention is made here of the fact that by 1838 he was one of the most experienced members of the legislature, or of any of the other notable successes he achieved between 1834 and 1838, namely:

• He was re-elected to the state legislature in 1836 and 1838, both times receiving more votes than any other candidate.
• The Illinois Supreme Court licensed him to practice law in 1837.
• He became the partner of “one of the most prominent and successful lawyers in Springfield” (where he now lived).

1846: Ran for Congress again – this time he won – went to Washington and did a good job.

Lincoln won a seat as an Illinois representative to the U.S. Congress in 1846.

1849: Sought the job of land officer in his home state – rejected.

The position referred to here was commissioner of the General Land Office, a federal position, not a state one, and one that came with a fair amount of power and patronage. Since Lincoln’s term in Congress was about to expire, his friends urged him to apply for this post, but Lincoln was reluctant to give up his law career. He finally agreed to apply for the job when the choice was deadlocked between two other Illinois candidates and it looked like the appointment might therefore go to a compromise candidate from outside of Illinois. Whigs from northern Illinois then decided that too many appointments were going to party members from other parts of the state and put up their own candidate against Lincoln. The choice was left to the Secretary of the Interior, who selected the other candidate.

1854: Ran for Senate of the United States – lost.

In Lincoln’s time, U.S. senators were not elected through direct popular vote; they were appointed by state legislatures. In Illinois, voters cast ballots only for state legislators, and the General Assembly of the state legislature then selected nominees to fill open U.S. Senate seats. So, in 1854 (and again in 1856) Lincoln was not technically running for the Senate; he was campaigning on behalf of Whig candidates for state legislature seats all throughout Illinois. Nonetheless, after the 1854 state election, Lincoln made it known that he sought the open U.S. Senate seat for Illinois. The first ballot of a divided General Assembly was taken in February 1855, and Lincoln received the most votes but was six votes shy of the requisite majority. When the process remained deadlocked after another eight ballots, Lincoln withdrew from the race to lend his support to another candidate and ensure that the Senate seat did not go to a pro-slavery Democrat.

1858: Ran for U.S. Senate again – again he lost.

Again, Lincoln was not directly campaigning for a Senate seat, although it was a foregone conclusion that he would be the Republicans’ choice to take Stephen Douglas’ U.S. Senate seat if his party won control of the Illinois state legislature. Lincoln actually bested Douglas in the sense that Republican legislative candidates statewide received slightly over 50% of the popular vote, but the Republicans failed to gain control of the state legislature, and Douglas therefore retained his seat in the Senate.

1860: Elected president of the United States.

And again in 1864.

Take any “successful” person aside and in their honesty they will tell you of the failures that litter the landscape on the road to their “success.”  It is in our failures that we discover our strengths (and weaknesses) as well as our likes (and dislikes).  It is not unlike a child learning to first walk.  The first step is for the child to learn how to fall without getting hurt, get up and keep going.  The leader knows that falling down without getting hurt is a prerequisite to knowing how to persist to success.  S/he also knows that a key to not getting hurt is how s/he talks to himself/herself after s/he fails.  What others say won’t nearly debilitate a person’s resilience as what one says to himself/herself.  A leader also encourages their followers to lean into their own failures as the inevitable pavers on the road to their successes too.