Flip Your Failures

The saying goes that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes. Usually when you hear this though, you are fresh off a failure. It can be the equivalent of someone telling you to “just calm down” when you’ve hit peak anger. The message isn’t going to sink in quite yet.

What makes failure so difficult is that it hits us right where it counts. Our ego takes a hit; our pride gets ripped up and our confidence can dwindle to where we’re not sure how to get it back up again. Lucky for us, every single human being has or will experience this feeling many times in their life. With all of our advances, we are, by nature, inherently flawed. The poet Alexander Pope said it best in 1711 when he said, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” I want that year to sink in: 1711. So not only does everyone around you experience failure, but humans have also been doing this for ages. We aren’t even special in our failure, even when those failures are spectacular. 

Here you are, sitting at the table with your latest disappointment, big or small, and you can’t seem to get yourself out of the funk. Although only you can determine how much time it will take to move on, I think there are some things to think about as you start to point your mind forward in a positive direction.

Thought 1: Will this matter in 2 months? 5 months? A year?
Something that breaks your heart today could be laughable in just a few weeks. As much as we are flawed, a wonderful thing about humans is that we. move. on.   

Thought 2: How do I want to tell this story?
I am not in the business of fibbing. This isn’t about sugarcoating situations or making it seem as if you’ve never made a mistake. This is about letting something that seems tough transform you in a positive way. Does the story really end here? Spoiler alert: it definitely does not.

Thought 3: If this happened to someone else, how would I talk to them about it?
Never underestimate how much we focus on ourselves. Something that feels monumental may not seem so bad to someone else. Imagine your best friend comes to you and shares a failure, do you look at her differently? Would you just assume that everything else she does from here on out will be a major flop? Don’t forget that we are always our own worst critic.

Thought 4: Has anything like this happened before? Did you survive? Do you remember?
I was asked in a class recently to think of my most embarrassing moment. My mind drew a complete blank. Now, have I had embarrassing moments? Almost too many to count. But when I try to recall them, I could barely remember them. Why? Because odds are they weren’t that bad to begin with. I did what we always do: moved on.

Thought 5: What if there just isn’t a silver lining?
You may have gotten this far and thought this is just fluff, none of this is realistic. For some situations, maybe none of the above work. Another reality of life, sometimes things just suck. It will burn for a good long time and may keep you up many a night. I have those too. When that feeling doesn’t leave you, it makes you all the more cognizant. I am more careful, more thoughtful and quicker to take advice on something. Sometimes life comes around to humble you and that’s all there is to it. But guess what? You survive that too.

With all this talk of failure, I want to point out that there is another key to bouncing back from anything: your successes! We often forget them, but they are usually a much higher number. It is too easy to toss these aside as we move on to the next thing. Always take time to remember how far you have come. Even if you are looking between this year and last, odds are you’ve learned and grown more than you have given yourself credit for.