MyShout

Being a good businessman means dealing with failure as well as success, says Peter Linacre

I am sure we all have our own personal soundtracks to our lives, which act as a reservoir of support and stimulus through good times and bad.

Who hasn't at one time or another not imagined being the castaway on the BBC's long-running Desert Island Discs and laboured over the eight discs, the book and the luxury item.

High on my list of music to take with me , perhaps not surprising as a lifelong Liverpool FC fan, is You'll Never Walk Alone and not just for the fond memories of matches at Anfield.

Whilst it never fails to raise the hairs on the back of my neck, one particular line always stands out: "Though your dreams are tossed and blown, walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart..."

Sport can often provide a metaphor for continuing to strive against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Vince Lombardi, the legendary American football coach, literally fills books with his sayings from over 30 years in that sport, and one of his best known is: "It is not the falling that matters, it is how you get up again that counts."

Will Greenwood, when writing about England's disastrous match against South Africa in the early pool games of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, asked himself the question: "Where do England go from here after such a numbing loss?" He summoned up one of Winston Churchill's wartime quotes and got it pretty much spot on. "Success," Churchill said, "is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."

That England then managed to proceed to the final was an eventuality not many

of us would have predicted as we trudged out of the Stade de France on that depressing Friday night in Paris.

In a different field both Philip Roth and John Updike through their Zuckerman and Rabbit novels, respectively, have given a rich depiction of life's ups and downs against an amazing backdrop of the past 50 years or so - roughly my own life span.

And then there is the sheer joy of many pieces of Monty Python nonsense with a favourite being the film The Life of Brian and, in particular, the song that ends the film, which was also adopted by the Will Carling England rugby team of the early 1990s. What can surpass this?

"Some things in life are bad,

They can really make you mad,

Other things just make you swear and curse,

When you're chewing on life's gristle,

Don't grumble, give a whistle,

And this'll help things turn out for the best.

And... always look on the bright side of life..."

If nothing else, this is another dead cert to be taken away to that desert island. Check it out on YouTube - it's priceless.

Peter Linacre is managing

director of Glasshouse Ltd