Failure. It’s a daunting word, isn’t it? I think the majority of us would avoid any type of failure if we had the chance. We’d want to avoid the overwhelming sense of disappointment that follows too if we had the choice. But as I’ve come to learn, failure isn’t something we should avoid and actually it’s something we should embrace.
As human beings, although we might like to disagree, we are not perfect. So, annoyingly, we should all expect to slip up and make mistakes at some stage in our lives. However, it’s how we handle these mistakes that determines whether we’re going to exceed in life or not.
Failure can make or break you, and it can paralyse your actions. No one has ever experienced a wild sense of success without first failing at some point or another. The lucky ones only have to fail a few times, whereas the others (… most of us) will have to endure hundreds of failures.
As a bit of mid-week motivation, let’s briefly remind ourselves of perhaps one of the most successful women of our time- J.K Rowling. Living in near poverty, raising her young daughter on her own and going through divorce, she didn’t let the 12 rejections of her first manuscript get in the way of self-belief and determination. Now, not all of us can expect to wake up one day and find ourselves with a net worth of just less than $1billion but we can take something from her success from failure story:
Failure forces you to rethink your approach:
I’m sure you’ve all read my last blog about the importance of planning (if not… you know where to find it!). But the necessity of a good plan wasn’t a life hack that I learnt over night. A good plan needs to be flexible and adapted along the way.
I have come to notice that some of my most monumental failures have been caused by rigid, poorly designed plans. It wasn’t that I had set myself an unrealistic goal, but I had told myself I could achieve it with an unrealistic amount of effort. Your goals don’t need to change, but if you’re struggling you may need to rethink your approach to achieving them.
Perseverance is your best quality:
I highly doubt you will ever see an example of success demonstrated by someone that just gave up. Instead, we need to be able to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and give it another go. Out of all the wonderful qualities I’m sure you have, persistence is the key to getting you to where you want to be in your career.
Through failure and perseverance, we can learn tons about our strengths and where we need to improve. As long as you’re failing forward- that is, becoming better because of your mistakes not in spite of them- then you’re not really failing at all! I remember trying to write my first ever blog, and I happened to conveniently look down at a book titled “Blogging for Business” to a page that read “the worst thing you’ve ever written is better than the thing you never wrote”. It stuck with me. Give it ago, what’s really the worst that can happen?!
Failure creates opportunity:
Think about this: how many times have you stumbled across a new passion (business or otherwise) because of something you failed at? Taking action is the foundation too all success. You don’t need to know exactly where you are going to get to where you want to be, but you certainly won’t get anywhere if you’re too frightened of failure to get moving!
Try not to see failure as defeat. View it as an experience that you can learn from.
If you need a little help embracing your failures, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Book you’re Free Strategy Session now!
Previously posted on my website www.themasterfixer.com