When was the last time you failed at something? Could be something small, could be something big.
What did you feel when you failed? Was it dread, anger or maybe anxiety? Did any of you dare to feel maybe… excitement?
What did you do? Did you complain about it? Cry? Ignore it? I for sure have done all three of those things after a failure. It’s natural.
Did you try again? When you went to try, what did you think? Were you encouraging yourself? Or were you telling yourself that you would fail again, before you even tried?
Most of us are scared of failure
For most of us, we have been socialized to think that failure is bad. Only those who do the best, are the best, and strive for the best end up at “the top.”
Common thoughts might be: making mistakes is a bad thing. Making mistakes is embarrassing. Making mistakes means that you will never be successful at whatever it is that you are attempting to do.
In some rare cases, people are encouraged to try and make mistakes. I would argue that rarely are we encouraged to take big risks because the risk of failure is so large.
And many people – out of pure love for us and trying to protect us! – don’t want us hurt in the process. Failure seems to be synonymous with hurt feelings, sadness and sometimes even resentment, so those who love us don’t want to encourage us to fail.
When we make a mistake or don’t reach our goal right away, most of us think that we have failed. And we make it mean that we don’t have the skills, or we aren’t “meant to do that”, or we tried and we didn’t make it so we shouldn’t try again.
We look to our past mistakes and failures and we make them mean we shouldn’t try again. We give up.
Before I go on, I just want to say that this is totally normal. This is how our society operates. Don’t get upset or offended if you do this sometimes! I’m not judging you, I’m lovingly calling you out so that you can be aware of it and make a change, if you want to.
What if we only saw failures as lessons learned?
If instead of thinking that failure meant a mistake or an inability to be successful – would you try again? Would you be so hard on yourself?
Think of a baby learning to walk. They fall over and over and over again. Each time they learn how to balance just a little bit better than before. Some of them even giggle while falling! They don’t give up.
Fast forward to toddlers/early school aged kiddos. They are learning to read. And as a former teacher, there are so many elements to being a good reader and it takes a lot of time and patience. Some kiddos move faster than others. Yet, in my many years of being in education I never once saw a child completely give up on reading. They kept trying even after every mispronounced syllable and failed comprehension question.
Kids don’t let mistakes mean that they will never get there. So why, as adults, do we do that?
We don’t HAVE to make failure mean anything bad, we get to CHOOSE how we feel about failure. It’s the best news ever.
Just like learning to read involves getting a little bit better at a skill each time you try, you can think of mistakes as getting a little bit better each time.
Each time you try something and you aren’t successful at it, it can be a celebration. A celebration that you learned something that improves your chance of success next time.
Did you try to lose weight but you overate because you were sad? This does not mean that you will never lose the weight. It means that you have an overeating habit when you are sad. Instead of dwelling on what happened and why you are mad at yourself for it- look at the situation and decide what crucial piece of information you are going to learn.
You may decide to think like me and get to the place where you celebrate failure. I choose to celebrate failures not only because I will learn from them, but because I won’t give up. As a recovering perfectionist, I used to only do something all the way, 100% all in, never mess up or make a mistake. And if I did then the whole house of cards falls down and I will never be good enough.
Now, when I fail at something I get so excited because I know that it’s another opportunity to prove to myself that I can keep going – I will keep going – even when I didn’t get it perfectly right the first time.
And that level of empowerment is something I hope everyone can experience! Not allowing yourself to feel defeat, but instead celebrate – that’s powerful.
Planning for Failure
Part of building this muscle of failure tolerance is by failing. A lot. Over and over. And not letting it mean your ultimate demise, but to start to believe that it is a good thing.
Every single time you learn or try something new, you are going to have to do things that you have never done before. I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but… you aren’t going to be very good at it the very first time. Bummer, I know!
When we get excited about a fail, we are more likely to look at the failure as something to learn from rather than something to push away and hide from.
Here is an example from my life:
I have really been working hard on being very disciplined with my calendar. I have had the tools for years, but the implementation of it was harder. Following my calendar when I just want to lay on the couch and read a book – not fun. When I first started to try and follow my calendar, I would fail all of the time. I wouldn’t do what I said I was going to do and I made it mean that I had no discipline, I didn’t care about my life and I would never be successful because I couldn’t follow my own damn plan.
After many many months of diligently working on allowing for negative emotion and working when I said I would anyways, and not making it mean anything about me when I did or didn’t (I just was someone who followed my calendar, nbd!) I finally felt like I was on the right path. I was following my calendar 95% of the time.
And yet, after weeks of diligently following my calendar, I had a weekend where I totally indulged in negative emotion. Some things happened that I wanted to feel sad about, so I did. And I didn’t follow my calendar one single time.
And it was amazing. It was amazing because I realized I had failed at my goal – following my calendar for the entire month of July and launching this website. I wasn’t going to meet my deadline for my launch and I didn’t follow my calendar.
It was so amazing because not only did I learn that the feeling of sadness is a catalyst for me to want to avoid any type of activity or work, but I knew that it was not going to be a detriment to me being successful. My website would still get launched, I would still have clients and I would still be an entrepreneur.
When I tell you how life changing it feels to feel excited rather than resentful, annoyed and angry with yourself when you fail, I cannot overstate how empowering that is.
So, now when I make a goal I plan for failure. I look at all of the crazy ass things I will need to learn how to do, create or be in order to achieve the goal. Especially if it’s something I’ve never done before (or tried and not been successful at) then I get so pumped because I know that it is an opportunity for me to prove to myself that I can learn and grow and not give up.
I want this for you too. Part of this failure tolerance is having self-confidence in your ability to achieve whatever you desire. Check out my guide to self-confidence below:
When making goals for yourself – think BIG!
If the fear of failure wasn’t an option for you- what would you dream about?
When you think “I could never do that,” then TRY IT! And FAIL at it! Learn from it! Give up sugar completely, make $10,000 in one month, travel solo. Whatever your goals are, think big.
Because when you think that big and you do things you have never done before, then you fail. And when you fail then you learn, you grow and you build your resiliency and failure tolerance.
And let me tell you – no longer being afraid of failure will open up so many doors and possibilities for you, you won’t even know what to do with yourself!
Go out there, do amazing things, try amazing things, fall flat on your ass, laugh and get back up again. You can do it. Over and over again.
