Failure: Don’t look back in anger
Sarah Jons 
It took me 10 years to become an overnight success. Successful businesses can take years and years.
It took me 10 years to become an overnight success. Successful businesses can take years and years. Let’s face it, we all make mistakes and I have made more than most. Failure is the most important step to my reaching success, but it can still feel like it’s crushing my soul. Having talked with hundreds of entrepreneurs, I have learned something very important: failure is absolutely the norm and essential. Accepting this failure as a lesson is one of the most important things I have ever learned. Consider my new quotation poster on my wall:
My first comedy gig 10 years ago was a disaster. There were 2 people present, one went to the toilet and the other left. I kept going. Jerry Seinfeld was booed off the stage the first time he tried comedy. Soichiro Honda was rejected by an HR manager at Toyota Motor Corporation when he applied for an engineering job, leaving him jobless until he began making scooters in his garage and eventually founded Honda Motor Company.
So I start a revolution from my bed / ‘Cos you said the brains I had went to my head. -Oasis
Most of us know that failure is a reality of life, and at some level, we understand that it actually helps us grow. Intellectually, we even acknowledge that the greatest achievers (past and present) also routinely experienced colossal failures.I believe and teach that failure can be taken one of two ways
- Either as a catalyst and stimulant for learning and doing better next time, or
- as the ultimate defeat you never let yourself recover from. This is true in your professional and personal life
Yet still, we hate to fail. If you surveyed 100 successful entrepreneurs and asked them if they were successful on their first product I would bet you that 99 percent would say absolutely not. Noting of course that 86.3 percent of all statistics are made up. We fear failure, we dread it, and when it does happen, we hold onto it. We give it power over our emotions, and sometimes we allow it to dictate our way forward (or backward). Some of us go to great lengths to avoid failure because of all the pain and shame associated with it. To make failure your friend and not your enemy, you must overcome it. Here are my strategies for moving on after a tough break.
. Don’t look back in anger (I heard you say)
Each time you fail, your fear of failure becomes smaller, which allows you to take on even bigger challenges. Making mistakes is not a big deal as long as you learn from them and avoid repeating them. Completely ignoring what happened isn’t helpful, so set aside a specific amount of time to wallow as much as you want. Take some time to be angry, upset, and frustrated so you can get it all out. If it’s something small, all you may need is an hour to pace around or cry in a pillow. For something larger, give yourself a full 24 hours to let it all out and wake up the next day with a clean slate. If you need more than a day, that’s okay, but make sure it’s an amount of time set by you and that you stick to it. You get that time to be as mopey as you want, but when it’s over, move on.
2. Slip inside the eye of your mind: accept and process it
Failure is an integral part on the way to success and self realisation. Michael Jordan said it best, I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Maybe you think you’ve mostly gotten over a bad business experience, but you find you still obsess about how you should have acted differently. There’s a big difference between lingering on a failure and taking the time to accept it, process it and glean lessons from it. Understand right away that some things are not in your control. It is a marathon, not a sprint. The quicker you stop getting upset, the quicker you can use this as a lesson to move on.
3. Try a little tenderness and talk about it
You know she’s waiting / Just anticipating / For things that she’ll never, never, never, never possess, yeah yeah /But while she’s there waiting, without them / Try a little tenderness (that’s all you gotta do) – Otis Reading
Successful people will never laugh at you or judge you when you fail, because they have already been there and they know about the valuable lessons you can learn from failure. Talk to somebody you know about how you’re feeling. It’s well known that just talking about something can make you feel better. Take a load off and express yourself. Chances are whoever you talk to will try to make you feel better, but even if they don’t, saying how you feel out loud puts that information out somewhere besides your brain.
3. Keep on keeping on and make it happen
No matter how often you fail, you are not a failure as long as you don’t give up. Does it feel like you made such a stupid blunder that nobody else could have possibly done so before? That’s very unlikely. There’s nothing new under the sun, and that includes mistakes and perceived failures. No matter how much you believe in what you are doing, something is not working. Take a step back or go for a walk (BDNF time). Breathe (Slow rhythmic and even). Take some time off from the project. Visit your family and friends and love what is most important. You live one time, and this is just a passing phase. You will get through this, but you have to clear your head if you are going to win. Again, push forward.
4. Challenge Yourself to Do It Again – hit me baby one more time.
Whenever you step outside the comfort zone and whenever you try something new, failure becomes inevitable. Get back on the horse and ride again, even if the horse threw you off the last time. Prepare for battle: This is not for the faint of heart. You have to separate your feelings from this game. It’s a business: it’s cut throat; it’s bloody; it’s a war. You must get back on the horse and do it again. You were working on the wrong project… so what? You are passionate, you are driven and applying those qualities to the right project you will be successful.
5. Focus on the Positive
Each failure makes you stronger, bigger and better. Don’t brush mistakes under the rug, but also don’t stop yourself from looking at all the positives you’ve managed to create. There’s always a balance in business. Maybe you didn’t snag that one big client, but what about all the others you’ve secured? You’ve likely already proven you can be successful on this path, so don’t let one fall determine who you are or colour your impression of an already positive overall effort.
Don’t you know you might find / A better place to play / You said that you’d never been / But all the things that you’ve seen /Will slowly fade away
6. Don’t make it personal.
Failure is a great teacher and it allows you to learn some of the most valuable life lessons. Separate the failure from your identity. Just because you haven’t found a successful way of doing something (yet) doesn’t mean you are a failure. These are completely separate thoughts, yet many of us blur the lines between them. Personalizing failure can wreak havoc on our self-esteem and confidence.
7. Try a new point of view.
Failure teaches you that a certain approach may not be ideal for a specific situation and that there are better approaches. One of the best things you can do is to shift your perspective and belief system away from the negative (“If I fail, it means I am stupid, weak, incapable, and am destined to fall short”) and embrace more positive associations (“If I fail, I am one step closer to succeeding; I am smarter and more savvy because the knowledge I’ve gained through this experience”). Every mistake is a learning opportunity, and after you’ve moved past your emotions, it’s important to revisit your mistakes with a new perspective. Look at what you did that went wrong, but also look at what you did that was right, and what you can do better next time. Failure is rarely so black and white.
Accept failure and rejoice. Failure is awesome. Failing fast gets you that much closer to success.
Don’t look back in anger, I heard Tim say.
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