Make Friends with Failure
That’s right get comfortable with it, shake its hand, invite it into your life and enjoy its benefits. I can safely say that I am somewhat of an expert in failure, having tried and failed at thousands of things in my life both big and small. It was in last few years that I have become comfortable with my lifelong companion, failure.
My comfort with failure started to develop with the traumatic circumstance in which I left a previous employer, you can read more details about it in my blog around betrayal. This event shook many of my long-held beliefs around my own abilities and derailed my carefully planned career progression, it was also the time of a particularly upsetting relationship break up which I handled very poorly as well. These live changing failures felt overwhelming at the time, I reflect back on this period of my life and I remember feeling almost zombified. The sum result of this was almost two years of putting myself confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth back together.
As I came out of my funk, however, I started to sense the profound and beneficial effect these events had had on me as a person. Since then I have really tried to embrace the concept of failure being my friend and necessary for my growth.
When I watch my daughter learn and develop I see her attempt new things every day and many of these attempts end in failure. What fills my heart though is the fact that she perseveres through these failures and the sheer joy for us both when she masters something is a wonderful way to reinforce the importance of failure in my life.
The thing with failure is can be quite painful, most of the significant failures in my life have been seared into my memory. The thing is as I look back on them now they really don’t feel that bad, in fact, many of them don’t invoke a significant emotional reaction for me at all.
I remember one of earliest failures in dating was when I asked out a girl at my school, I remember speaking to her on the phone a few times and finally summoning the courage to ask her out only to be told no way as she liked someone else. This was crushing enough in itself, but luckily, I was at home in my room and I could cry my pubescent eyes out without the shame of anyone else seeing. What of course happened was that she told her friend, who told their friend, who told their friend and pretty soon my failure was very public. All my fear, anxiety, shame and anger bubbled up inside me and I felt like leaving school and never coming back, luckily my parents wouldn’t let me quit and I was forced to go back and face my peers. Eventually, the whirlwind of emotions lessened and everyone moved on to the next thing and my failure becomes history. The funny thing is even though I still remember this event, I doubt many if any of the other people at my school do.
The emotions I experienced in regards to the above failure haven’t stopped happening, particularly if I invest significantly into something and it doesn’t achieve the outcome I want. However, what has changed is my ability to cope with these feelings and move forward much quicker when I experience them.
So how do you become friendly with failure? Here are the top things that worked for me.
Experiment
Think of everything you do in life as a scientific experiment with the goal to prove or disprove a certain hypothesis. In order to do this, you need to gather raw data in the form of evidence. Any result that contributes to your evidence base is a success whether it achieves the result you were hoping for or not. Events that show you ways to not do things are just as valuable as those that support your hypothesis. Eventually, with enough raw data, you will begin to develop a much clearer picture of what you want to achieve and how you might go about achieving it. Every action you take regardless of the outcome is a learning opportunity and as such can only be good for you. The thought of gathering data rather than failing at something made it a lot easier for me to lessen the emotional impact.
Share
Just by talking about failure and hearing how others have experienced the same shame, regret and fear around failure that I have, I feel a weight lifted off me. I realize that failure is not unique to my life and that I am not abnormal for failing. It’s also a great way if you feel stuck in a particular area of your life, to gain outside perspective which can often be the difference between banging your head against the roadblock in front of you or surging ahead towards your goal.
Redefine
In any particular event chain, we often focus on the failure part of it as the defining moment. At while, back one of the lads at Brojo shared a first date experience he had been on. He felt the date was a failure as she hadn’t wanted to see him again. So, we unpacked it and we saw massive success throughout the experience that he had just discounted.
• He had been courageous and approached a girl he was attracted to and asked her out.
• She had said yes.
• On the date, he expressed his feelings of attraction and they shared a kiss
• He was authentically honest and felt that there was a good connection between the two of them.
• On reflection, he really enjoyed the time he spent with her.
If you look at it this way, this date was a massive success and a really enjoyable experience. Sure, it didn’t go 100% the way he would have liked but at least he is free to go and experiment in other situations until he finds the one that is the right fit.
Acceptance
Lastly for me accepting that it’s okay to feel the way I do about failure was a big change. You can’t control your emotions, they happen. What you can do is manage your behaviors regardless of the way you feel. I have unpacked with my own coach a lot of the drivers behind my fear of failure and the clarity this has given me empowers me to act regardless of how I might feel about a situation.
Ask yourself, have you learned more from the failures in your life or the successes?
