How to make the most of failure!
Failure sucks. Big time.
It also teaches us so much about ourselves. We can learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. This is because when we fail we learn about our resilience and how quickly we can bounce back from set-backs and challenges.
How can we respond positively to our failure?
Do we:
fall into negative self talk
ignore that the event happened
give up entirely
Or do we:
pick ourselves up and try again?
review what went wrong?
Make adjustments and try again?
How to learn and succeed from past failures
Depending on what or goal is and what our failure was, do we try again, make some adjustments or move on?
Understand why we failed?
I have always wanted to write and would eagerly accept any writing assignment when it was offered in my job. However, as it was only a small part of my job and I couldn’t do more of it.
The first time I attempted to write a novel I was busy with small kids, studying for a degree and working. So carving out time to write and to learn about writing just became too difficult.
Make plans to prevent failure from occuring again
When I decided that I wanted to give it another try I knew what were some of the challenges I would face in doing so. To help increase my chances of success I tabled time everyday in my calendar and I set myself the challenge of writing a chapter everyday until it was done. To help me do this I put in some numerical data to aim for. Twenty four chapters of 3000 words.
I was able to take a past failure, learn some lessons and put it to good use when embarking on my second attempt at the same task. I do not regret that I failed because it helped me to succeed on my second attempt.
Each time I have failed at something it has been an opportunity to learn about myself. I take those lessons with me and consider them when I create my plans. The more I know and understand what is likely to derail me then the better prepared I can be when creating my action plans.
When I started training for my first Ironman I spoke to a lot of people who had done them before. I also spoke with people who didn’t think I could do it. By understanding where people thought I might struggle and potentially fail, but also what other people learned from their experience and mistakes I was able to avoid many of the same mistakes. I still made some mistakes but they didn’t derail me from reaching my goal.
One lesson I learnt from training for Ironman is that when you create a long-term goal, creating some mini goals within that objective can help you to stay focussed and motivated when goal fatigue can set in. If you have a goal that is 9 to 12 months into the future some achievable milestones can help to achieve the bigger goal.
What to do if you can’t pick yourself up?
If you have failed at something and you find that you are unable to mentally recover from it then what can you do? For me the first thing I would do is forgive myself. We cannot do everything that we set our minds to. If we fail we can put it aside and decide to come back to when we are ready to properly process it.
Last year I failed to complete a 70.3 race that I had trained for. The weather condition of the day proved to be too much for me. What I have learnt from that experience is that I need to do more open water swims and make sure that I could mentally cope with rough water. Moving forward if we are able to race again then I will make sure that gap is closed in my training plan.
I have set myself a goal of publishing one article a day for thirty days. I have already failed at this. Last weekend I found I was too tired to do it. So this weekend I made sure I had my articles written so that all I would need to do is to edit them. Moving forward if I am to publish on weekends then I will need to be more organised during the week.
So if you have failed to achieve something in the past:
what did you learn from the experience?
were you able to bounce back from it?
If you haven’t:
why not?
were you able to complete the goal at another time?
If you want to do something but you have been unsuccessful previously a coach can help you to move forward. Together you can understand what led to failure and put in place plans and support strategies so that you can succeed the next time.
