“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.” - JK Rowling
Life’s all about perspective so before we begin, I’d like you to imbibe the following--there is no failure, just results. People who have never failed have basically never come out of their comfort zones or taken risks; they only did enough to get by and stayed on the sidelines of true success because they are so afraid of failing.
Still, failing is a life experience--most often a painful one that we all have to go through. So here’s everything you need to know about dealing with it in the healthiest possible manner. I’ve broken it down into three simple segments, which should make it even easier to understand:
You Did Not Fail, It Did
First, lets define failure and success. What is success to you and will the lack of it equal failure? If that is the way you are seeing it, you are being extremely hard on yourself and this very emotion is what will come in the way of your success.
Keep in mind that you are not a failure nor do you fail. A project may, a business might, but you don’t fail. This is because as long as you keep getting up and pursuing, your experiences are just a wealthy bank to help you get closer to your desires.
Opportunity To Revise Your Strategy
The experience is a part of getting the recipe right. So look at your strategies again and see what and where things went wrong. What were the signs and what were the emotions? What were you saying to yourself when you knew this was going south?
A strategy can be compared to a recipe. Ingredients and the timing and sequence are put in and the method they are mixed in is imperative. So remember that these experiences are a great opportunity to retrace your steps.
Also, keep in mind that insanity means doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. So if you find that the results are not aligned with the expected outcomes, then you will need to, as a group, adjust the actions. Thus, it is essential to identify the particular course of action that did not work, and change your strategy.
The journey of success is being comfortable to admit that you may have misjudged a situation.
Keep On Moving
Finally, don’t stop, don’t cry and certainly don’t blame or punish yourself! Leave the “Go into exile I must... failed I have” style insane behaviour to Star Trek characters like Yoda and get back on your horse and simply keep on moving. Persistence is faith in motion. You can only persist when you believe and you can only succeed when you persist.
Be ready to make decisions. Have the passion and guts to stand up and take responsibility and most importantly, know that there are no failures, only feedback.
When my clients ask me,‘But what if I fail?’ I often tend to respond with a ‘What if you succeed?’ The strangest thing is that our deepest fear is not our darkness but in fact our light.
“Don't worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.”- Jack Canfield (Creator of Chicken Soup For The Soul)
Malti Bhojwani is a certified life coach. "Like" her on facebook Malti Bhojwani - Professional Certified Life Coach & Author. When she's not teaching people how to improve their lives, she's helping scores of corporates, educational institutes, and individuals better themselves using her unique coaching techniques. She's also launched a series of YouTube videos offering tips and advice; check them out here.