Failure is an option! We fear failure, but how can we use our most embarrassing failures to fuel our successes? There are 5 simple ways to do it.
When we plan for success, it’s amazing how little we plan for failure. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, but why do we avoid failure at all costs? Is it because we don’t have foresight, or is it something far simpler?
Failure is, for many people, a shortcut to embarrassment. We see it all the time in bosses who are covering up their mistakes at every turn. But this is why failure breeds cover-ups. When we have an embarrassing failure in life, this is the one thing that drills deep to our core, but we have to use our embarrassing failures as fuel for our success. But how do we turn our failures into success?
Take Responsibility for Your Mistakes
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
Some people get by in life by playing “the blame game.” However, it’s a big waste of your energy when you condemn everybody around you. If you acknowledge what you did that went wrong, you can learn from your mistakes. If you try to offset any mistake by blaming the person next to you, you don’t just avoid learning, but you also don’t endear yourself to other people.
Understand Your Feelings of Inadequacy
When we feel failure, we feel that we are unimportant. The big problem in feeling like this is that we start to believe this is the truth. But when we look at our mistakes with a holistic perspective, does it actually stem from not being good enough, or is it something simpler? We all make mistakes. To err is human, as they say, and we all may feel that if we make a mistake, that we may not recover from it. However, how you deal with the feelings will play a massive role in your recovery from your mistakes. Instead of escaping your feelings of inadequacy by trying to buy yourself out of it, embrace any feelings of insecurity.
Acknowledge Your Strengths
When we encounter an obstacle, we can look at it in a holistic manner. We need to address the areas to improve, but we also need to recognize the strengths, talents, and skills that have got us this far. When you’ve got so far without hitting a wall, and then you hit a massive one, you can think that you aren’t cut out for your line of work, or you’ve blundered your way through every opportunity, and now they caught you. But when you start to recall your strengths, this gives you a solid foundation to build towards the future.
Remember that Failure Is Part of the Journey
Your past does not equal your future.
– Tony Robbins
We look at our journeys in a linear timeline. If we get it into our heads that failure is part of the journey towards success, we can get any feelings of inadequacy out of the way. But what happens? You encounter people that tell you “failure isn’t an option,” which turns any attempt from a modest failure into a cataclysmic event. The reality is that failure is sometimes unavoidable. If you accept that failure is part of the journey to success, you won’t panic, and you will even learn a few things about yourself in the process. Failure is something that happens, but this is why pencils have erasers.
Create a Plan
If we ever encounter an embarrassing failure, it makes us retreat into our shell, and while this makes us feel okay in the short term, how do we progress? Many people will tell you to get back onto the horse after a fall. But it’s not just about getting back into the swing of it, but how are you going to do this? What can you do next time that will avoid going down that negative route? When you create a plan of action, it gives you the opportunity to consider what you’ve learned from the failures, but also how you will apply these lessons in any future attempts. We have to remember that as we grow, we will always encounter some form of setback. Everybody has encountered an obstacle, and people were met with derision every step of the way: the earth was flat, that mountain’s too tall, etc. But when you start to turn your failures into opportunities to develop, you will grow.
Failure is an option, and it can be the best way to learn. However, so many people are scared of failure because of that emotion that takes them right back to high school. However, if we start to realize failure is a part of life, we can grow bigger, and we can grow better.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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