How To Transform Failure Into Your Biggest Advantage
Before diving in the techniques to transform failure into your biggest secret weapon, I’ll start with a short and sweet pre-face.
We have ALL failed in something and there's a 110% probability that we will fail in something else again. Yes my friend, not gonna lie here. But...THAT'S OKAY, THAT'S TOOOOOTALLY NORMAL.
Some failures are bigger than others but what they all have in common is that after getting over them you ALWAYS land in a different place from where you started, usually with more experience, awareness of what to avoid next time and the confidence to say "I messed up, I failed, but I got over it."
The simple and easy fealure equation usually works like this :
You fail -> You realize you've failed -> You panic -> You look at the failure objectively -> You draw useful conclusions from it -> You get over the failure -> You're proud of getting over it + bonus: you've added the whole situation to your luggage of experiences
Can you relate?
Now, let's dive into practical ways to get through this equation successfully:
#1 Remember: NO ONE WILL DIE (hopefully)
99% of the time no matter how big is your failure, no one will die! Maybe you'll lose money (not a happy thing but definitely not as bad as death), maybe you'll lose friends (sad - or maybe not since you ended up like this - still, not as sad as death), maybe you'll lose something you've owned (disappointing, but not as much tragic as a death), maybe... okay, I think you've got the concept.
I know it's not the happiest thing comparing something to death but honestly, death is actually the worse thing! So as long as it doesn't involve that, you're fine.
N.B. If your case is part of that 1%, friend, you got to seriously worry here.
#2 Exercise your failure muscles
I've attended a conference on career development once and one of the greatest takeaways was "the more you fail the less failure has power" and… it's #sotrue!
The first failure, no matter how big or small they actually are, will appear like the worse thing ever. Well, the more failures you'll find yourself into, the more you'll find yourself saying "aha, been there already... here's how I'll fix it" or even "oh this is a piece of cake compared to my previous failure! Look, this is how we can get over it..."
See here the pattern? The more failure experiences you collect, the more trained and prepared you are when a new failure comes on its way!
#3 Fail out loud
Okay so let's say the fail happened. You know that all/some of the responsibility is yours... most of us would tend to hide, be ashamed of it (again, totally normal). But now that the failure happened and there’s no way you can delete it, you know what?
EMBRACE IT.
Take 100% responsibility for what you've done and demonstrate to yourself and others that "Yes, I failed!" The moment you'll admit it and embrace it will be the moment you'll find the strength to wanting to get over it and pass on the next step.
#4 Draw useful conclusions
Next step at this point, before moving on, is to think rationally about what happened and draw from it useful takeaways that you can bring with you when facing other situations.
Make a list in your journal, create a document on your laptop, talk about it with a friend, talk about it with your cat, whatever you think it's useful to pull out from this experience helpful conclusions, do it!
#5 Thank the people who failed you
Sometimes it's your own fault, sometimes you end up failing because of a consequence of other people choices. And as soon as you find yourself realizing this, most of the time, you'd probably be tempted to mangle this person/group of people. Again, do pull out these feelings by writing them down in your journal, creating a [PRIVATE] document on your laptop, talk about it with a friend, talk about it with your cat... whatever...
But actually, you should thank him/her/them (one day..), here's why:
You wouldn't have found yourself in this situation = you wouldn't have had the possibility to learn new stuff about how to get over a failure.
You wouldn't have found yourself in this situation = you wouldn't have felt proud to get over a failure that someone else has put you in.
You wouldn't have found yourself in this situation = you wouldn't have trained your failure muscles
TO CONCLUDE
Failing is totally normal (actually you'd be a weirdo if you wouldn't find yourself failing every now and then).
When facing a failure, embrace it and see it as a great opportunity to train your failure muscles
Be grateful for all the experience and useful insights each failure has given you
I must admit it has been pretty fun and liberating writing down this post. Also because I'm coming out from one of the biggest failures I found myself facing so writing this down has been a great personal reminder!
What about you, what has been one of your biggest failures and how did you turn it into a useful experience? Would you add anything else to this list?
I'd love to hear from you!
