Is feeling successful a trap?

All professionals start their working lives dealing with content failure; no one, apart from business guru Warren Buffett, starts their work life with the tools that they need to be an immediate success – and this process is important.

Every time you fail, you learn a new powerful lesson that will propel you toward a success. In fact, Oath CEO Tim Armstrong states that failure is the one defining factor that made him as successful as he is today. “You have to be OK with risk and you have to be OK with failure. I have a saying: “You have to fail toward a goal," Armstrong told Business Insider recently. “As long as you're failing, if you know what the goal is, it's OK to fail in that direction. And that's the advice I got from people," he added.

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But what comes next? Once you’ve slogged away at the daily grind, experienced failures and learned your lessons, what comes next? It’s inevitable that at some point, you’re going to become satisfied with the path you’ve taken and what you’ve gained along the way. This is the time when most business leaders take a step back and start to relax – after all, if you’ve lived the journey and paid your dues along the way, you deserve the reward of the win, right?

Wrong. According to veteran entrepreneur and self-made millionaire Laure Moore, this is exactly when leaders are on the verge of disaster. Moore surpassed the expectations of her peers at the tender age of 19; she built a company called Mobile Heartbeat and dedicated herself to making it a success, before finally selling it to the Hospital Corporation of America just before she turned 30.