Learning to Fail

Let’s face it.  We all make mistakes. Most of us know that failure is a reality of life, and at some level, we understand that it actually helps us grow. But many of us still associate strength with success, not failure. But I want you to realize that this is not the whole truth. You need to learn how to fail first before you can succeed.

No one likes to fail.

As much as we try to evade failing, it is a crucial part of experiencing life. This really became evident to me while watching my 1.5-year grandson recently and I realized that without failing we would never have learned to walk (or talk, or write, or do a million other things!). This lightbulb moment got me to not only recognize the importance of failure in our lives but the importance of celebrating it. Falling down and getting up takes courage, it takes resilience to do it again and again, and it takes determination to not give up until you succeed. And you better believe that the more you fail, the sweeter the success will be when you find it!

But another crucial part of failing is diminishing your internal parameters of perfectionism, which I find can be even more harmful to people who want to achieve something big in life. According to goodtherapy.org “Perfectionism is often seen as a positive trait that increases your chances of success, but it can lead to self-defeating thoughts or behaviors that make it harder to achieve goals. It may also cause stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.” And I think we can all agree that we can do less of all of those things in our lives right now - ha!

So what can we all do to fail better?

Fail with grace. 

1. Pause and reflect.

   Mistakes are unavoidable, but having the self-leadership skills to look objectively at the situation helps you grow as a person and a professional. That’s why the first step to fail with grace is to understand and thoroughly analyze every small detail and figure out what caused the failure (including your emotions and expectations).
   

2. Make a plan.

   Here’s where the lesson comes in: you simply can’t predict everything that is going to happen to you. Life doesn’t play by the rules, but the more mistakes you make, the more you learn how to avoid them in the future. Shazam! Similarly, we can’t expect to do the right thing and get the best results. Sometimes succeeding means doing something bold, something different, something brave because repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result can come with a hefty price tag like losing our job, sabotaging our relationship, or irreparably hurting our ego.

   But the most costly part of failure can be our hesitation and reluctance to move forward.
   

3. Appreciate and celebrate the lesson.

   Once you realize that failure is not the end of the world, you will see that you can move on and start over again. It is just a setback on your way that is not worth wasting sleepless nights over it. And if you can, be brave and openly admit and acknowledge your failure verbally to others. The benefits of this are two-fold as you are opening the doors for new ideas towards your own success and you are opening dialogue to support others on their journey to success too. When you learn from your own experience and realize that success doesn’t happen overnight, you start appreciating others and the amount of time and effort that they have invested in their ventures more.
   

Following these 3 simple steps will also teach us how to cope with problems and get over them without getting too stressed out.

The building blocks to overcoming failure and healing actually involve surrendering to grace. It’s in this process of embracing failure, feeling pain and sadness, that allows us to find our way back, move forward. And while I don't actually believe in learning to fail, I do believe in getting back up and trying again!