Breaking Through, Reinventing After Failure

By Bobbi Govanus

Failure is an ever-present phenomena that can create fear and block you from achieving all who you are called to be, to do and to have. Fourteen Authors share their stories of divorces, bankruptcies (both personal and business) and events that they battled against and overcame to achieve happiness and success. Their honesty and tips will encourage and inspire you to persevere and make your way to joy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365755590

Book preview

Breaking Through, Reinventing After Failure

Breaking Through, Reinventing After Failure

Bobbi Govanus

Chapter Contributors

Denver Beaulieu-Hains

Theresa Campbell

Dawn Carpenter

Bernadette Cipriani Major

Jan Deardorff

Dr. Nancy Fox

Gina Garcia

Deb Lewis

Kathleen Peters

Jayne Sanders

Rhonda Shurtleff

Dr. Walter Sims

David Wood

Copyright © 2017 Bobbi Govanus

This is a compilation of true stories told by people who broke through the barriers that failures created in their lives.

It is dedicated to your success!

All rights reserved. 

ISBN #: 978-1-365-75559-0

Welcome to Breaking Through

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. - Denis Waitley

The title of this book came to me because when I pictured FAILURE, I saw a brick wall that stopped me.  The odd thing is my own hand shaped many of the bricks.  When I failed as a child by not living up to my own expectations of things like a GOOD GRADE, I built on the bad situation with bricks like… You are stupid, You are lazy, You NEVER do anything right.  So, the next time I tackled anything, I had a lot higher wall to overcome until finally, I just knew I could not win.  

When you hear the word failure what does your body do?  There are some who have a visceral reaction.  For many it triggers fear, others it is empathy and still others shame. It really goes back to life experience and in many cases the angst is left over from childhood when perfection was expected and failure was not an option! 

Coming to grips with failure is an important part of being fully human.  None and I repeat NONE of us miss out on this fact of life because unless we never try something new, there will be failure along the way.

When I was talking with people about creating this book, the reactions were priceless.

You will need to sell it in a brown paper wrapper, people won't want anyone to know they are reading a book about failure.

You will have a hard time finding contributing authors because no one will want to admit they have failed at anything.

Who wants to read about FAILURE?  You should write about SUCCESS!

In this book, you will read the stories of doomed relationships and lost jobs, death of dreams and loved ones.  These brave authors are opening their lives to you to demonstrate that failure is not fatal. They each have broken through the failure barrier and became better, not bitter. Take note and embrace their strategies for learning from their setbacks to find a new plateau for you to begin again on the uphill climb we call LIFE.

I share my personal insights: Reinvention Reflections and tips along the way.  I reinforce with my own life experiences what I and some famous folks have said about this phenomenon called Failure.  I then introduce you to each of our thirteen chapter contributors. 

I hope this book will help you break through to Success by a realization that failure really is only a stepping stone on the path… tripping occasionally is okay, Just GET UP. 

No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist. - Chris Hardwick

Meet Bobbi Govanus

After a thirty-year career in retail selling everything from socks to stocks, with only a computer and a plan, Bobbi launched her own small business and soon realized that she had discovered a true niche within the computer training industry.

Bobbi quickly grew that business from the basement of her Minnesota home by listening closely to her customers and providing customized computer training and solutions.  The company eventually brokered over 1000 high-caliber certified computer trainers across the United States and Canada and even served clients as far away as England, Japan, Germany and India.  She grew the company to sales of over twenty million. 

In celebration of these and other accomplishments, Entrepreneur Magazine recognized Bobbi Govanus as their Home-Based Business Owner of the year and Minnesota honored her as their Women in Business Advocate. 

Bobbi published her first book in 2014, How to Pilot When We Were Raised to BE Stewardesses, Reinventing your Life with Passion and Purpose.  In 2015 she Co-Authored Discover Your Destiny, Live Your Dreams Love Your Life: Expert Tips on Creating Abundance, Joy, and Success. In 2016 she contributed to Decisive Women, Designing Decisions in 5 Minutes or Less.

In 2015, Bobbi hosted the first Reinvention Retreat at Sea bringing speakers, coaches and authors together to mentor and assist attendees who want to make the rest of their life, the best of their life. 

Bobbi Govanus is Mother, Wife, Author, Founder of the Reinvention Retreat and a Reinvention Resource!

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."   Napoleon Hill

A New Perspective on Failure: the Blessings of Hitting Bottom

Meet Kathleen McCarthy Peters who is the owner of a travel agency franchise: KMP Travel - Cruise Planners, an American Express travel representative.  Her passion is planning transformational journeys for clients from bucket list trips to helping speakers host inspirational retreats and workshops in awesome destinations.

Kathleen was bitten by the travel bug early, but growing up on military bases was just the start.  She went to work onboard cruise ships as both cruise staff and entertainer.  Kathleen has also lived and worked abroad in Europe, Australia and Mexico and has over twenty years of experience in the hospitality and tourism industries.

Kathleen has successfully transitioned from ballerina to MBA and from stay-at-home mom to advertising executive.  Her latest chapter is as an entrepreneur and business owner, where she can combine her love of travel and the arts to plan life enriching journeys for her clients.  Kathleen also believes in giving back by volunteering countless hours to several community and philanthropic organizations – including Rotary International.

Kathleen lives with her husband, 2 daughters and her English Springer Spaniel in Orlando, FL. 

How do you define success and failure? My definitions of both have changed over the years and the good news is that they are now MY personal definitions and are based on my passions and goals and not on the expectations of others.

Growing up, I defined my successes by how well I achieved the goals of my parents and teachers.  If I performed well at home and school and achieved their goals for learning or behavior, I was a success and worthy of love and admiration.  If I didn’t perform well and achieve goals, I was a failure.

As an adult, I continued to define my success or failure by my family’s and then society’s definition of success.  How I was doing in life, career and love was always compared to how I perceived others’ lives. 

It took several experiences of feeling like a failure and feeling judged by others before I learned two important lessons:

It is a mistake to allow my success or happiness to be dependent on other peoples’ opinions and judgements of me.

It is better to look up to a Divine source of my purpose, gifts and inspiration, then sideways, comparing myself to others.

In retrospect, I see that what I considered my failures held either lessons, blessings or often both. I saw my biggest failures as:

All my failed auditions for dance companies and Broadway shows

Failure of my marriage and unemployment

Failure to re-enter Corporate America after 11 years on the Mommy- track

How I redefined Failure

In reading the stories of people that have achieved great things in business and life, I am impressed they are not afraid of failure.  Although, they are usually discussing their past failures in light of current successes, I think there is another difference.  They do not personalize failure.  The idea, project, or venture failed…they did not believe they were failures.

That difference in perspective is everything.  As the Swami Sivanada believed, "Brooding on past mistakes only fills your mind with grief, regret and depression." While we need to learn from our mistakes so that we do not repeat them, believing we are mistakes is self-defeating.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.  J.K. Rowling

So, You Think You Can Dance?

I graduated from college with a B.A. in Performing Arts; not one of those practical degrees that guarantee a job.  I had always loved ballet and dancing, so despite growing up in a military family and moving often, I always managed to find a ballet school wherever we landed. What I loved most about dance (especially ballet) were those occasional moments of transcendence, when my body was so well trained and the choreography so ingrained, I could forget the physical and lose myself in the music and telling the story.

I was successful within the structured and nurturing environment of college and looked forward to moving to Los Angeles to pursue a professional dance career upon graduation.  I was told very few, even those successful at the regional and amateur company level, ever make it professionally and support themselves dancing.  I was also told only the top 1% of dancers are so gifted that they are discovered and easily find work and success.  Evidently, I was not part of the 1%.

After a succession of rejections and some sexual harassment by a couple of unscrupulous casting directors, I was depressed, riddled with fear, self-doubt, and gaining weight (the biggest sin in the dance world).  My darkest hour, the one that finally brought me to my knees, was the night I was mugged outside of my apartment on my way home from work.  I was bruised, but not seriously injured.  It felt like the physical manifestation of the mental and emotional battering I’d been experiencing for the last year.

Hitting Bottom. I had done everything I could - and it was not enough.  I was not enough, not talented enough, good enough or strong enough to make it as a professional dancer. I was tired of running my own show. My best and most diligent efforts brought me to a place I didn’t want to be physically or emotionally.

Surrender. I surrendered my plan for my career.  I admitted it was not working for me and I became willing to let go of my preconceived ideas of a life as a professional dancer and became open to new possibilities.

Acceptance: My negative self-talk wasn’t