Ok let’s face it, failing is unpleasant! It makes us feel as we will never reach our goal, it will convince us that we are not good enough, or not as good as you believed, or not as good as other people believe.
We weigh failure in different ways and this depends upon many factors – the fear of disappointing ourselves, the fear of wasting the time, the fear to disappoint the ones we love, lowering the high expectations that our friends and family have from us, and fear of being criticized by others – just to mention a few.
Society has always made us believe that failing is bad, and that you will be defined by your failures when in reality it is part of the learning process and that’s what makes us climb faster on the learning curve. In a few words, failure helps us to thrive.
The only thing that there is between your failure and your goal is how you process and use failure at your advantage.
So when we fail we have two options: we can either be passive, starting to blame everyone, convincing ourselves that we are not good at it, and fueling the negative mindset that will lead you to fail in the future maybe with a different goal; or we can be proactive, process the failure in a healthy way, and be paradoxically positive about it because you have some material to work on and improve, realizing you are one step closer to success. So, here’s a list of what you can do do overcome failure and to make the best out of it.
- Start with this very simple life lesson: failure does not exist.
The literal meaning of failure is “lack of success”. It’s not just a part of the learning process, but it is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of the learning process. How did we actually learn to walk? by smashing our ass out countless times on the ground until we finally did it. Same thing when learning to cycle, or skate, or learning our mother-tongue, or learning a different language. The common denominator of our successes is the continuous failure from which we have learned.
Think of Thomas Edison – the guy thanks to whom we have light in hour houses – he was working on some models of light bulbs and he had to go through 10000 versions that failed before inventing the right one. During a press conference a journalist asked Edison “how did you feel about failing for 10000 times”, and he replied “I didn’t fail at all, I have only discovered 9999 ways of how not to build a light bulb”.
This mindset helps you to consider the lack of success as invaluable hints and opportunity to get better, and not as failures.
- Identify why do you feel bad about failing.
Feeling bad when we fail is normal, but this should be due to the fact that we are not quite there with the results we were hoping for, and this phase is usually followed by an analytical phase where we try to understand what we have learned from it, and what could we have done better.
But if there is something else that makes you feel bad when you fail that goes beyond what we have discussed above, try to pin point what it is. Ask yourself what you feel the way you feel, write it down if necessary.
Do you feel bad because you have let yourself down? because you think that all your effort came down to nothing? because you think you have disappointed people who believe in you? because you think that you have lowered the other people’s expectations?
Whatever your question is there is only one answer: you are not a machine and failing is normal.
Whatever it is try to get at the root of it, and address it first. Try to scrape-off from yourself the fear of being criticized and do what you do for yourself and for no-one else. Failing is normal, embrace it before it destroys you.
- Fail Fast
The philosophy of “fail fast” is very well known, especially in the start up context. If “failing” is a synonym of “learning” (as it should be), the phrase “fail fast” can be translated into “learn fast”. The more you develop your tolerance for failure, the faster you can get over the initial emotional part, the faster you can learn, and the faster you can succeed.
- Change
Whatever your strategy, method, or plan was, it led you to fail… it sounds harsh, but that’s what it is. There is no point in repeating what you did because you already know where it will lead you, so change your plan. Try to objectively analyze what you did and spot some flaws. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedbacks to whoever you think can help you, step out of your comfort zone and try new strategies.
- Don’t compare yourself to anyone else
Everybody is different and everybody has their own strategies and their own methods. What works for them won’t necessarily work for you. Take a moment to think about it, how does comparing your weakness with someone else’s strengths going to help you? Do you really think they will size up? Comparing yourself to others takes up energy that you could use to actually improve yourself.
The only person you should try to be better than is who you were yesterday.
