Learning to Love Failure
TL:DR - Failure is truly a gateway to growth and development. If we can learn to fail without losing momentum or confidence in ourselves, the possibilities are endless as to what can be achieved. Read on to reframe your relationship with failure.
Failure doesn’t exist - we either succeed or we learn trying.
Failure is subjective - We get to decide what failure and success mean.
Failure makes us exponentially better - If we’re willing to fail with the intention to learn from it, the trajectory of what we’ll be able to create will be ten fold.
Are you struggling to take action on goals due to fear of failure? It’s a common roadblock for all of us. Schedule a Free Discovery Session and learn more about how coaching can help you move past that fear.
For most of my life, I had an unhealthy relationship with failure. I suffered from a fixed mindset. I saw failure as a problem to be avoided at all costs. That's why I never learned to skateboard and stayed away from video games. Both are examples of things I'm "just not good at" and it has stayed that way for over 30 years. Though I don't think my life would be remarkably different if I had stuck with skateboarding and video games, I can't help but wonder all the other ways I avoided challenging myself due to a fear of failure.
Which leads me to the most important lesson I've learned in the real world- failure is both a necessity and benefit of life.
Failure has had a bad reputation over the years, but it's truly a gateway to growth and development. If we can learn to fail without losing momentum or confidence in ourselves, the possibilities are endless as to what can be achieved.
I remember learning about Carol Dweck's book, Mindset, in 2015 and it planted an important seed in my mind for shifting how I viewed failure. The theory around growth mindset, the premise of the book, is inextricably tied to seeing failure as an opportunity for growth.
When we go into a challenging situation with a growth mindset, we feel confident in ourselves to bounce back no matter what happens. When we face a challenging situation and potential failure with a fixed mindset, we feel inadequate. Whether we view failure as fuel or a roadblock impacts how likely we are to challenge ourselves to grow and learn in all areas of our life.
Click the image above to learn more about Carol Dweck’s theory on growth mindset.
In another great book on this topic, Antifragile, Nassim Taleb shares that people who are antifragile get stronger the more they are challenged. Nassim tells us to remember: “A wind extinguishes a candle but fuels a fire.” Meaning, the same stimulus that can destroy a light can also fuel it 10 fold. Failure is a challenge that’s there to help fuel us in our endeavors, but it all depends on how we look at it.
So often, fear of failure means we avoid the risk of failing and count ourselves out before trying. But what are we actually afraid of? It's usually some combination of (a) feeling embarrassed if we don’t succeed, (b) ending up back where we started, and/or (c) perfectionism. Understanding why we avoid taking action is powerful because it helps us to understand how we can move past our initial fears and still take action anyway. Let’s take a closer look at each;
Feeling Embarrassed: How we feel is a choice. It’s determined by what we decide to think about the circumstance. We can decide we look silly because we didn’t succeed, or we can decide we look courageous for trying. More often than not, when we think others are judging us negatively, they are actually envious of our courage. We took action while they sat on the sidelines.
Ending Where You Started: If we’re worried about ending up back where we started after failing, what we’re really saying is that the worst case scenario of trying is our current reality 😳 Why not try then? The worst that can happen is already happening so we have nothing to lose!
Perfectionism: Perfection is impossible— it doesn’t exist and it’s a constantly moving target. If we always want to succeed to uphold our image of perfection, we are stagnant. Succeeding is easy when we’re staying within the confines of what we know how to do.
When we are able to look at and challenge these stories that don't serve us, we find ourselves more motivated to take action.
Once the possibility of failure is no longer holding us back from starting, we can begin to see it as the fuel we need to reach success.
I want to take this a step further and offer a new framework for failure. I would argue that failure (as we know it) doesn’t exist. Failure, by definition, is "lack of success", but when we take action we learn from it no matter the outcome. The learning that comes from trying can be viewed as success.
We either succeed or we learn. Failure is no longer a negative in the equation because it’s synonymous with learning. Just like we can decide that trying and not succeeding is courageous, we can also decide that taking action and learning is a success.
Failure is a key part of any success, because success is impossible without multiple attempts and trying new things. We need to know what doesn't work so we can figure out what does. If we don't get the results or outcome that we were aiming for, it doesn't mean that we've failed, it means that we've learned more about what doesn't work. When we know more about what doesn't work, we can focus on trying new ideas— and get this— our brains are far more creative and resourceful after we’ve failed.
Failure is an important part of the DNA of trying anything new. If we go into any new venture understanding this, we'll react differently to challenges and see them as guides rather than roadblocks. It's easy to look at other people who are successful and assume they never had to deal with failure. In reality, anyone who has succeeded in life has failed many times. Those that have achieved great success used their failures to learn instead of letting it defer them.
We wouldn't have any of the luxuries we have today without growth minded creators who use failed attempts as data to get exponentially better.
We have this powerful reframe of failure readily available to us to use liberally. In fact, it's been said that we should fail multiple times each week or even each day in order to reach our full potential. If we’re failing, it means we’re in the arena.
If we’re willing to fail and be intentional about learning from it, the trajectory of what we’ll be able to create will be 10 fold. Failure breeds creativity as we look for new and more innovative ways to get to the goal. Science shows that frustration (from failure) actually cues particular brain areas to be more alert so you have a heightened level of focus next attempt. This is amazing— it shows how helpful failure can be in the process. It may be a “failed attempt”, but with its opportunity to learn and fueling of creativity, it’s anything but a failure!
If failure has to exist, we need to talk about the fact that failure is subjective. Whatever you tried that didn't end in success is not a problem until you decide to label it a problem.
We're often quick to make a missed attempt mean something negative about our capability or the endeavor. But this is just a story we make up in our mind based on the definition or metrics we've set for ourselves. We all get to decide what success and failure mean and we make up the rules of the game. Unfortunately, we often create negative narratives about our attempts and it can leave us feeling demotivated. Those negative thought patterns don't serve us as we need to feel energized to keep going.
If you feel like you're constantly failing, I encourage you to take a step back and look at the rules you've created for yourself. Are you a failure for losing the match? Or was it a success that you got out there and competed since you've been rehabilitating for the last year after ACL surgery? Is it a failure that you hosted an event and only three people showed up? Or was it a success because you were clueless and terrified to host your own event just a couple weeks before?
I'm all for striving to be the best version of ourselves and setting aggressive goals, but there comes a time when we create rules that do more harm than good. Be sure that the rules of the game are fueling you to continue, not deterring you from your dreams.
We can make failure mean that there's something wrong with us, which creates tension and demotivation— OR we can make failure mean that we're courageous badasses for taking action. Failure can either hold us back or it can fuel us 🔥 — it all depends on how we’re using it. If we're putting ourselves in a position to fail, it means we're not sitting on the sidelines-- and that, in and of itself, is a win.
