One of the biggest obstacles to doing something different, making changes and pursuing your dreams is the idea of failure. Many people mistakenly believe that failure is the complete opposite to success. If you are failing and making mistakes, then you are far from success. Even if you are doing good right now, and suddenly you make a mistake or fail, then you might feel like this is the point where you should quit and give up.
Over the past few years, I’ve been learning to embrace failure and it’s had amazing results in my life. Physical intelligence has always been a weakness of mine. I feel like it takes me longer to learn how to do things properly with sports, cardio and so forth. As a result, I struggle tremendously particularly when learning a new skill. A couple of years ago I decided to face failure and embrace the mistakes and just see what happens. I decided to take up running as this has always been a challenge for me and something that I mentally felt I was a failure at. Instead of giving up when everything was hard, I kept going. I forced myself to run, sprint, do hill sprints and I took breaks when I needed to. In one year, I ran 2 half marathons. The first half marathon was difficult, painful and my time was below average but I completed the half marathon which was a success for me. The second half marathon which was 9 months later felt great, I could sprint at the end, run up the hills, felt in control and my time was above average and I shaved 40 seconds off my overall pace per kilometre in less than 9 months. Embracing failure allowed me to make mistakes, learn in my own way and be confident that even though I’m struggling right now, I will get better.
Learning to embrace failure is one of the reasons I push myself to write every day, take up new activities such as yoga and capoeira, learn a new skill, be open to trying something different like skiing, and continue to try and better myself every day. It’s amazing that we can allow the idea of failure to prevent us from taking risks but when you embrace failure, there are no limits to what you can do because you accept that you will make mistakes and that you can only get better from this point.
1. You must fail to be successful. Change your mindset to embrace the fact that most of the time you will need to fail to be successful. A failure does not mean that this is the end for you, that now is the time to quit. No, this is not the time that you stop and walk away from something that is important to you. A failure is often a sign that you may be on the right track but need to learn from your mistakes, grow and adapt. Remember that everyone who has ever been successful had to go through a personal challenge or obstacle to find that success. Even the people who you struggle to imagine ever dealt with failure, had their share of obstacles to overcome.
One of the many real-world examples of this is Albert Einstein who didn’t do so well in school and almost dropped out. He also worked odd jobs until he was offered a clerk position where he could explore ideas and cement his theories on what would be known as the principle of relativity. If Einstein had given up and not remained persistent he would not be recognized as one of the leading scientists in his time and transformed the scientific community as a result.
Whatever you are struggling with right now, whether that’s pursuing a dream, graduating school, finding a healthy relationship or reaching that next physical or mental milestone, stay persistent despite the failures. Embrace the fact that failures are often a positive step to success.
2. Failure opens your eyes to new possibilities. Think about some of your past struggles. What happens when you encountered an obstacle and failed? Did you keep doing the same thing repeatedly and eventually get it right, or did you have to try something different to achieve what you wanted? Losing a job can give you an opportunity to find a career that is meaningful for you. Failing to learn a skill can make you think of different ways to learn about a concept that you are struggling with. You might get tutoring, try a different instructor or explore other ways of learning that really click for you. Failing at a business idea initially might be heartbreaking but it might have provided you with networking opportunities and skills that help make the next business idea a success.
Many of the successes in my life involved me having to approach things differently. The path to getting what I wanted was not what I expected or planned for myself. Nor was it easy and free of challenges. To make positive changes in your life, you often need to think differently about a problem and find other ways to achieve success. Failure allows you to deviate off the path that you planned for yourself and embrace the opportunities that life throws at you. You might discover that the success you want in your life is possible when you give yourself room to explore and approach the obstacles in your life in a different way.
3. Failure teaches you lessons that you must learn. All of us have learned something that could have only happened with an epic failure. Maybe you neglected something that was important. Your focus and energy was on other things that you missed paying attention to something critical. Maybe something you did caused you to take a good, hard look at yourself and realize the problem lies within you. You might need to work on your skills, maturity, confidence and integrity to attain success. Maybe the mistakes you kept repeating kept adding up until you couldn’t ignore it anymore and had to make a change. For instance, I have a friend who pushed people away too much until it caused many of his friendships to break down and he lost many friends as a result. He realized that all the little mistakes he was making added up, and he couldn’t ignore the fact that many people in his life didn’t want to be around him anymore. He had to make a change and that change wouldn’t have happened if the mistakes didn’t add up.
These life learnings can only happen from failure. Yes, the process is painful and you might even be ashamed that you had to go through this failure to realize this lesson but everyone goes through this process. The most important thing is now you can use these lessons to grow as a person, learn from your mistakes and be a much better person as a result. Never define yourself because of a failure. Work to avoid allowing mistakes to paint an inaccurate and negative picture of yourself as someone who isn’t worthy of love, friendship, job satisfaction or personal happiness. Remember that failures are there so that you can learn, grow and become a better person. Just make sure to pay attention to the lesson a failure is trying to teach you.
4. Take responsibility when a failure occurs. Things will happen that are completely out of your control. You can’t control who publishes your work, gives you a chance, or the opportunities you will receive along the way. You also can’t blame yourself for things that happen that have nothing to do with you. There will be failures that you shouldn’t blame yourself for. Things happen, obstacles happen and life isn’t always going to be fair and easy.
Instead focus on what you can control when faced with a failure. Find a solution so that you can move forward. Don’t focus on the past and believe that you are a victim of your circumstances. Failing to take responsibility keeps you stuck. You can’t move forward if you choose to blame others and your circumstances on why you have not succeeded. Instead use that energy productively by finding a solution to your problem and moving forward. Face your challenges head on and find a solution to persevere even when things happen that are outside your control. Admit when something is out of your control such as getting injured while playing sports, and when something is in your control such as not meeting project deadlines due to poor time management. Taking responsibility will allow you to use your energy to change your situation more favourably.
5. Failure helps you take even greater risks. Part of the reason failure may seem scary at first, especially if you have never failed at anything in life yet, is because it’s a territory of unknowns. You wonder what will happen if you fail. Will your life be destroyed because you failed or will you have to settle for something that makes you unhappy because of a failure? However, once you fail, you quickly realize that you will be okay and that you have survived and even become a better person because of the failure.
Embracing failure involves admitting the ways that you have failed and being honest with yourself about the outcomes of that failure. Maybe you dropped out of school when you were younger, but remembered how you went back to school, graduated and had amazing opportunities as a result. You can survive a failure and nothing teaches you that lesson better than failing and seeing how you have prevailed.
6. Failure is only temporary. When you hit roadblocks, you might believe that the struggle will continue and paint the rest of your life negatively. Failure is not permanent and isn’t an indicator of how successful your life will be in the future. When you hold onto failure and let your past failures control how you feel presently and prevent you from moving forward, then you give your failures power in your life. When you allow yourself to let go of failures, learn from your mistakes, you can put the failures behind you and move forward.
7. You can grow through your failures. One of the most positive aspects of failures is that you can use this opportunity to grow and improve yourself. This is a great time to challenge yourself and see how strong you can become. When I was in college and about to graduate, I made a terrible mistake which almost destroyed a great relationship with a colleague. This failure was one of the most embarrassing things I had done during that time but fortunately I used this time to recover and figure out what I needed to do to grow as a person. Part of that growth was learning how to sincerely apologize and communicate to my colleague for my words and actions. I also had to prove my worth again. As a result, I could help fix the situation with my colleague and received a glowing recommendation letter in the process and realize the importance of healthy and proactive communication with my colleagues. This failure changed the way I handled all my professional relationships moving forward. It also taught me that I needed to work on my people and communication skills a bit more.
Accept that you are not a perfect person and you will fail and mess up sometimes. What matters the most is that you use this experience to create a better lifestyle for yourself. Adopt a positive mindset so that you can see the opportunities within your failures.
Failure doesn’t have to be something you fear and try to avoid nor should you try to avoid failure. Failure will happen to you and only make you a wiser, stronger and more successful person. Instead, work to embrace failure and view it as a tool that you can use to make amazing changes in your life. Focus on changing your mindset to view failure as a positive thing. The way to success is paved with a road of mistakes and failures. The failure isn’t as important as how you use your failures as an opportunity to grow.