WHY YOU SHOULD EMBRACE FAILURE!
FAILURE FEELS BAD
I often find myself saying in my blogs that we should question the assumptions made. So, let us do just that
Does failure always feel bad?
No
When you don’t care too much about the outcome, then you might not even consider what you were doing a failure
For example, if you decide to race your friend over 100 metres in the park and you lose, it’s very likely that failing to win that race does not make you feel bad. So, you can see that you attach feeling bad to failure when the event has meaning to you — that it to say, the deeper you care about the outcome, the more likely you are to feel bad if you deem the outcome a failure
When you care about the outcome, you’ve effectively primed yourself, so that you’ll feel good should you succeed, and feel bad should you fail
Being an emotional creature by nature, you cannot simply convince yourself that the outcome does not matter
HOW TO BETTER COPE WITH FAILURE
It might be suggested to you that you should just prepare better, so you’re less likely to fail!
Indeed, preparation is a necessary component leading to the path to success, but you will know that preparation alone, will not prevent your failures
It’s part of living to be constantly trying to achieve, and doing that will inevitably lead you to both success and failure
Fine! I’ve pointed out the obvious. Let’s get into some real helpful techniques
PLAN FOR FAILURE
Business leaders, scientists and inventors can provide some useful insight here
To be successful in any of these fields will involve planning for failure — if you run a business that launches a new product, if you are a scientist looking for a better skin-care product, or you’re an inventor wanting to replace current battery technology — you will have to embrace failure, or you will feel bad should your efforts result in failure
OK, How do you avoid feeling bad?
Certainly, in all of those examples, you will all be attached to the outcome. The difference is that when you have planned for failure, mentally you will already, in advance, have considered the probability of failure and will already have considered what action will need to be taken should your efforts not be successful
Whatever it is that you are trying to achieve, you should consider the ways your plan could face failure!
For you to run a successful business, you might decide to only release a new product line in one of your markets or to only order a certain number of your new product — these actions will not prevent feeling of failure should the product not sell. What it will do, is prime your brain to be prepared for the feeling that will accompany failure as you have thought about the possibility before any failure happens
By priming your brain for failure, you can reduce the time spent reflecting on the failure, reduce the feelings associated with failure and create the conditions for moving beyond the failure
Consider the worst. You’ve decided to go ahead, you’ve decided that the potential reward that might result from your actions is worth it
WAIT!
Do one more thing before you jump in — consider, visualize, what the consequences of failing might bring, what that would feel like
By taking a little time to do this, you’ve prepared yourself for the worst — of course, I really hope the worst doesn’t happen for you! But by considering it, you will be in a much better place and ready to move ahead with your next challenge rather than getting bogged down by one failure
DISASSOCIATE THE FAILURE
Your brain is not very good at drawing a distinction between failing at one particular task and being a total failure
If you’re like me, you will have said to yourself more than once “I’m a complete failure, that was terrible!”
And you know what, when I said that, my internal voice did not come right back at me and say “No, Justin, you’re not a failure, it was just that task you tried was a little too tough, you expected too much of yourself, give yourself a break.”
Nope!
I didn’t hear that come back at me, my brain just said “Yep, you must be right” and with that released all the chemicals that made me feel bad.
As I really don’t like feeling that way, I decided I needed to do something positive to minimize that bad feeling. I found that by saying to myself “Well you failed to write a great blog today, but you can try to improve it tomorrow” it helped me avoid the bad feelings I previously got whenever I sat down to write and could not write anything interesting or useful
Even when you are facing a significant event or challenge, like an exam or a competition, where you only have one chance; by telling yourself that the failure is attached to that day and that particular event and not to you, you will make it easier to move on
After all, even if, for example, you fail a college entrance exam, the world keeps spinning and you’ll need to move on with your life
MIS-REMEMBER THE FAILURE
The consensus of scientific opinion is in agreement that your memories are not stored as fixed events. Your brain is not like a computer hard-drive
Unlike retrieving your last saved document which will have the same words that you typed, your memories will change and are not fixed in their details
While this may be hard to accept, you can use it to your advantage, particularly when trying to cope with failure. What you can do is when you think about that significant failure, you could inject some humour into the memory, you could recall someone’s face in more detail and give them a big nose or change what they were wearing, or inject some cartoon music
The less you focus on your actual feelings or vision of your failure the less distinct it will be when you next remember it and the fewer bad feelings will be associated with your memory in the future
WHAT ABOUT ANALYZING FAILURE?
You’ll have noticed that I did not say analyzing the failure is a better way to cope with failure — you might ask why?
While I totally agree that analyzing failures is a fantastic way to learn, for me, it is not a way to cope with that initial feeling of failure — What it is, is a way to reduce your likelihood of continued failure and to increase your chances of future success
Analyzing your failures is a critical part of preparing for future success. You should though, focus on the elements that were in your control — if you were trying to fly a kite and there was no wind, you wouldn’t want to consider yourself a failure, but you might consider checking the weather forecast next time to increase your chances of success!
Failure can be your greatest learning opportunity. Failure can also merely mean that your timing isn’t right. There are so many stories whether it’s The Beatles, Colonel Sanders (KFC), JK Rowling, and so on, where people had to try, try and try again before they found success — the vast majority of “lucky” successful people had many failures on their paths to success
Expecting an easy path to success, will increase those bad feelings you get should you experience a failure on the way
OWN YOUR FAILURE
It can be easy to attribute your failure to some external event. You may be doing this if you catch yourself saying something like: “It just wasn’t my day”, “I was a bit tired”, “They were too good for me”, “I can’t do this”
Be aware, if you have a tendency to shift the responsibility away from yourself — this is self-sabotage and will keep you from learning and will likely make you feel worse for longer
By taking a look at how you’d prepared and how you failed you are setting yourself up for future success
Maybe not for that particular activity you failed in, but you will certainly be improving your chances for success in the future. Whenever, you start to analyze your failures you are training you brain to perform a better more detailed checklist that will help you succeed in your next endeavour
THAT’S IT FOR TODAY
Remember, it will be hard to use any of the above techniques as a one off and have it work instantly.
Becoming aware of, the ways to embrace failure needs work. But, if you want to change, that work will be worthwhile and it will become easier with practice!
If you like what you read and you’re ready to put it into practice click here to grab your very own
Going for Gold! Embrace Failure Assist List!
where I provide a quick and easy checklist for you to keep in mind when you’re ready to Embrace Failure!
Remember every week I’ll be putting out more ways to improve your life here on Medium
Your ardent supporter
JustinKynde with kindwordz
