How to Overcome Failure - The Power of Failure
Doesn’t success mean avoiding failure?” The answer is no. All of us fail. As we travel, we all hit potholes, take wrong turns, or forget to check the radiator. The only person who avoids failure altogether is the person who never leaves her driveway.So the real issue is not whether you’re going to fail. It’s whether you’re going to fail successfully (profiting from your failure) or allow failure to send you on a permanent stopage or detour. As Nelson Boswell observed, “The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views mistakes.” If you want to continue on the success journey, you need to learn to fail forward.
Unsuccessful people are often so afraid of failure and rejection that they spend their whole lives avoiding risks or decisions that could lead to failure. They don’t realize that success is based on their ability to fail and continue trying.
When you have the right attitude, failure is neither fatal nor final. In fact, it can be a springboard to success. Leadership expert Warren Bennis interviewed seventy of the nation’s top performers in various fields and found that none of them viewed his mistakes as failures. When talking about them, they referred to their “learning experiences,” “tuition paid,” “detours,” and “opportunities for growth.”
Successful people don’t let failure go to their heads. Instead of dwelling on the negative consequences of failure, thinking of what might have been and how things haven’t worked out, they focus on the rewards of success: learning from their mistakes and thinking about how they can improve themselves and their situations. Depending on your attitude toward it, failure can either bog you down or help you along on your journey to success.
With each failure, you can move one step farther on the success journey. Successful people keep moving, they make mistakes, but they don’t quit. Here are ten guidelines to help you change failure from detour to dividend:
Appreciate the Value of Failure
Never forget that you cannot take the success journey without experiencing failure. In fact, train yourself to think of failures as mileage markers. Each time you fail, know that you’ve traveled another mile farther on the road to your potential.Failure has another value: it strengthens you. Henry Ward Beecher, nineteenth-century author, clergyman, and outspoken opponent to slavery, said, “It is defeat that turns bone to flint, and gristle to muscle, and makes people invincible, and formed those heroic natures that are now in ascendancy in the world. Do not, then, be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.” Each time you experience a fumble, failure, or defeat, remind yourself that you’re one step closer to your potential and your dream. You’re learning to fail forward to success.
Don’t Take Failure Personally
Most people who never learn to fail forward are stopped because they take failure personally. They start saying to themselves, “Why can’t you do anything right?” or “You shouldn’t have tried; you knew you couldn’t do it,” or “See that; you’re a failure!” But there is a huge difference between saying “I have failed” and “I am a failure.” Someone who has failed can learn from her mistakes and move on. It doesn’t change who she is. But the person who tells himself, “I am a failure,” gives himself little hope of improvement. No matter what he does or where he goes, his failure stays with him because he has internalized it. He makes it an inseparable part of him. Asking someone who has convinced himself that he is a failure to be successful would be like asking an apple tree to produce cantaloupes. It can’t be done.When I think back on my life, I realize that I took failure a lot more personally when I was younger, less experienced, and less successful. My mistakes looked a lot bigger to me then. But as time has gone by, I’ve learned to accept my limitations as well as my strengths, understand that everything I do isn’t going to be successful, and tell myself, “I sure messed that up. I’ll do better next time.”
If you’re in the habit of assassinating your own character or questioning your talent every time something goes wrong, stop it. Making mistakes is like breathing; it’s something you’ll keep doing as long as you’re alive. So learn to live with it and move on.
Let Failure Redirect You
Sometimes failure signals that it’s time for a change in direction. If you keep hitting the wall, it may be time to back up and look for the door. If you keep taking the same detour, maybe it’s not a detour but your main road. However, when you experience failure after failure but your dream burns within you just as strongly as ever, keep going. Also recognize that some of the greatest accomplishments of life literally were birthed out of failure.For example, look at the life of John James Audubon. He is considered a pioneer in wildlife study and preservation. But in the early 1800s, he was merely an unsuccessful shopkeeper in Louisville, Kentucky. He attempted to support himself and his wife, Lucy, in that occupation, but after struggling for eleven years, he finally went bankrupt. That failure prompted him to pursue his life’s work— observing, drawing, and painting wildlife, the thing for which he will always be remembered.
If you’re repeatedly experiencing failure but you want to fail forward, allow your mistakes to redirect you. Maybe you’re working someplace where you don’t really fit. That doesn’t mean that you’re bad or wrong. It just means that you need to make an adjustment. If one door repeatedly closes on you, don’t stand there forever wondering why you can’t get it open. Look around for another open door. One may be standing open right now that you’ve continually overlooked.
Keep a Sense of Humor
When all else fails, laugh. That’s my motto. It’s easy to laugh when everything is going great, but it’s important to laugh when everything is going wrong. Nothing improves emotional health like laughter. It relieves stress and helps you quickly put your mistakes into perspective.As you make mistakes on the success journey, keep everything in a positive, humorous perspective. Try to look at life the way professional hockey coach Harry Neale did during a tough time. He quipped, “Last season, we couldn’t win at home and we were losing on the road. My failure as a coach was that I couldn’t think of anyplace else to play.”
Ask Why, Not Who
When things go wrong, the natural tendency is to look for someone to blame. You can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden on this one. When God asked Adam what he had done, he said it was Eve’s fault. Then when God questioned Eve, she blamed it on the snake. The same thing happens today. When you ask your daughter why she hit her brother, she says it’s his fault. When the quarterback throws an interception, he says the receiver ran the wrong route. When you ask an employee why he didn’t meet a deadline, he points his finger at someone else or cites circumstances beyond his control. And we won’t even talk about all the lawsuits in which people blame others for their problems.The next time you experience a failure, think about why you failed instead of who was at fault. Try to look at it objectively so that you can do better next time. My friend