Business and life are full of success and failure. I don’t know of a person that only knows success without also knowing failure. Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Milton Hershey, H.J. Heinz and Abraham Lincoln all had one thing in common. They all filed bankruptcy before going on to great success.

I heard a quote the other day that I wrote down. The quote was “failure is the fog from which we all glimpse triumph.” I have thought about that quote for several weeks and think there might be some truth to it. See, if you only have success, you will not be forced to improve, change or better yourself. It is usually a failure (hopefully a small one) that forces us to look deeply at what we are doing and how we are doing it. It also forces us to ask; how can I improve on what I do?

I like the words haze and fog because they can sometimes be a metaphor for our life when we can’t quite see the path forward. Life is like that sometimes. When you get turned down for a job, lose an account, don’t get selected for a promotion, have a business failure etc. you find yourself in a little haze (fog). 2024 and 2025 have been slow transactional years for hotels due to many reasons but mainly the cost of debt. In my 35 years of selling hotels there have been many cycles but one thing is consistent. The cycles and seasons always change.

As with every haze and or fog, it is usually short on duration and then the light comes through, and you see a whole new day stretched out before you. Life is a gift so don’t waste one day rehashing old disappointments. John Wayne said – “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” KT