In this post, I’m going to reveal four strategies for embracing failure and turning it into success. I’ll reveal those strategies below, but here’s a sneak preview…
How embracing failure can help you to become a success
1. Dream big, aim high
2. Learn to enjoy failure
3. Try to fail often
4. Maintain momentum
What does it mean to embrace failure?
Failure is simply a part of life. You can’t always win, you can’t always get what you want and you can’t always hit your goals. That’s the truth.
How you react to those failures is up to you. You can either quit, blame someone or something else or take responsibility and embrace the fact that you failed.
Those who are able to embrace failure will use that disappointment as a stepping stone and an opportunity for growth. As you will learn in this post, the people who succeed the most also fail the most. They learn from their mistakes, readjust themselves and quickly move on.
Life’s winners are the biggest losers
What is success? What constitutes a failure? Why is it that some people give up at the first hurdle while others go on to succeed beyond all measure?
You don’t have to look very hard to find the trail of disappointment from life’s highest achievers. In fact, here’s a link to 10 of them…
https://www.oberlo.com/blog/famous-failures
Whether it be famous artists, athletes or entrepreneurs, tap under the surface of any successful person or company and you’ll find all too easily the multitude of projects gone wrong, investments lost and races lost.
In fact, it seems that failure is inevitable when working towards anything worthwhile. There’s no such thing as success without it. The two go hand in hand.
Failure; the ugly cousin of success, but without whom, you’d get nowhere.
Simply put. The most successful people in life are those that are failing the most. But more than that, they’re embracing failure, even going after it because they understand that it’s the key to success.
How? Read on…
What is success?
Success isn’t black and white, and can’t be defined alone by trophies on a wall, medals or money in the bank. It’s much more abstract than that. Along with failure, they’re ideas and values, they change, they’re personal.
Meeting your standards
Experiencing success comes down to whether or not you’re meeting the standards that you’ve set for yourself.
Your ideas of success and failure may not be the same as mine, and mine certainly aren’t the same as Mo Farah’s. For example.
For Sir Mo, finishing second in a marathon he knows he should win is a failure. Just starting a marathon would be a success for me.
When you know that you’re living to your fullest potential and that you’re doing the best that you can and meeting your standards. That’s when you know you’re winning.
Success can be yours to own if you know what your goals are.
Related: 17 Essential Actions for Middle-Aged men to take
Why we need to fail
When we fail, it means we’re trying. It means we’ve set ourselves a goal or a standard that we’re working towards, and when we fail, it just means that we haven’t reached our standard yet.
Failure equals learning. It equals knowledge. It shows us how and what we need to change before we try again.
A boat sailing an ocean doesn’t just set its course once and hope it lands in the port. It needs to constantly re-adjust and turn as it battles the weather, storms and the current.
It’s those fine tunings and changes that make the journey a success.
Failure helps us to measure how far we’ve come. If you don’t set yourself big goals and go for them without fear of failure, then how will you ever know what you can achieve?
Related: 3 simple sacrifices to make more time
The difference between winners and losers – embracing failure
When we fail. We have two choices. To give up and go home, or to learn, grow and push on.
Undoubtedly, everyone will fail at some point in their lives. It’s just that life’s success stories don’t give up. Period.
Life’s winners don’t dwell on their shortcomings. They learn from it, in fact, some even crave failure as a way of pushing for even more success.
Those who are afraid of failure see it as terminal. Something to hide from. Their thinking is focused on I can or I can’t. I will or I won’t, if I try, I might fail.
The worst failure that I can think of is giving up on a challenge, a change or a dream because of fear or because you got knocked down at the first, second or even 50th hurdle. We have to fail to grow. It’s a part of life and the key to all of your future success.
To change your level of success, you just need to change how you view failure, and winners will embrace it every step of the way.
“If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”
Steve Jobs.
How embracing failure can help you become a success
1. Dream big, aim high
By setting big goals that seem unachievable you can get excited by the thought of achieving greatness. The dream is so big that you know you can’t possibly achieve it without failure and by focussing on the dream and slowly working towards it, you never know how close you can actually get.
For example, if you haven’t run very far in the last ten years, challenge yourself to complete a half-marathon in 2 hours a few months from now.
Will you succeed? Probably not, but how much fitter will you be after all that training?
Now would you consider that to be a failure or a success?
2. Learn to enjoy failure
Try to see failure as something you need rather than something to run from. See it as something you have to pass through to reach success, as corny as it sounds, it’s stepping stone.
In the diagram below, ‘Model A’ sees failure and success as either/or.
Whereas ‘Model B’ quite rightly sees failure as a necessary step towards success.
3. Try to fail often
If failure makes us succeed more often, then the more failures we have should equal more success.
Like everything in life, the more we experience something and use it the stronger that ‘muscle’ will get.
Try not to take failure personally. Yes, it can hurt your pride, but when you understand that it’s necessary and is part of your ever-increasing armoury, then you can start to use it to your advantage.
4. Maintain momentum
When we fail, another key to keeping our dream alive is to maintain momentum. To keep trying again and again. Yes, allow yourself a break, celebrate your achievement of failing then get ready to go again.
Adjust your goal, change your path or your idea but keep focused on your ultimate dream.
Without momentum and continuous growth, the danger is to slide back to where we started from.
When you’re trying… you’re winning
So swing for the fences, ask her out on that date, apply for that job (or quit it), make the phone call, start your own business, sign up for that half marathon.
Expect failure. Make friends with it. Learn from it and one day you’ll be able to look back to see just how far you’ve come.
A failed half marathon
To give this theory some context, I’d like to tell the story of a friend of mine and a failed half marathon.
A few months ago a friend of mine posted some disturbing comments on facebook. Words that I couldn’t get out of my head. Let’s just say he was in a very dark place.
Overweight, depressed and drinking heavily he’d hit rock bottom and was struggling to see a way out.
Aim high: The challenge
I challenged him to run a half marathon with me. A feat that I knew would be near impossible to complete with just a few months of training, but one that I knew was big enough to really challenge him and perhaps even excite him.
Amazingly, he jumped at the chance and his energy and positive mindset became almost instantly palpable. A million miles away from where he’d been just a few days earlier.
I’m not suggesting that the challenge magically cured him. But I do think that any challenge or new opportunity outside of our comfort zone can give us unexpected energy and focus.
The big day
Fast forward 120 days and we stood together at the start line focussed on running 13.1 miles in around 3 hours. Goosebumps and all.
His journey to that point had been as tough as can be, but standing there giddy with excitement and looking forward to a new chapter in his life had been worth every bead of sweat.
Failing to finish – his biggest success
Despite my friend’s best efforts, he had to retire from the race after 9 miles. The distance (plus an unusually hot day) was a bridge too far for him. A car took him the last few miles and I finished the run alone.
Although he ‘failed’ to cross the line that day, he’d already won.
The day he said yes to the challenge was the day he decided to change his life. Did he fail? Hell, no.
Those four months of training took him from excessive daily drinking to losing 2.5 stone (15kg/33lbs) in weight, regaining his confidence and being able to get outside his head. That was the real victory.
Yes, he failed to finish the race and collect his medal, but his journey from accepting the challenge to that 9-mile-marker has been nothing but a raging success.
To be better than yesterday
All we can ever try to be is better than we were yesterday.
Stay focused. Work hard. Have belief. Keep embracing failure. Have a dream and work towards it. Fail, fall down and get back up stronger and more determined than ever. Failure is your friend. Failure is the key to success.