Dealing With Failure

One of the true measurements of a ‘successful’ person is the way that they deal with failure. The reality is that each of us will fail, and fail often. Our culture has ingrained in us the need to strive not to fail, and I think that has created some positive effects, but I also wonder if we have trained people in our culture to ignore or not contemplate failure, and in doing so, not deal with and effectively learn from our failures.

Ignoring failures or trying to get over them quickly can have the negative side of effect of dooming us to repeat similar mistakes, rather than effectively evaluating and absorbing those mistakes or failures into our lives so that they produce a more correct response or action the next time a similar situation occurs. Whenever I threw an interception in a game (and unfortunately it happened more than once) my goal was always to process why I had made that mistake, how I could learn from it, how I could prevent that from happening again, and then (after learning from and understanding the mistake) only then, moving on to the next play. Granted, the mental process can happen within ten seconds depending on the mistake, etc. but the process of understanding the mistake and learning from it is necessary for development. So then, these questions are appropriate to ask in many situations where a mistake has been made or failure has occurred:

1. Why did I make that mistake?

2. What can I learn from the mistake?

3. How can I prevent that mistake from occurring again?

4. What will I do differently next time?

5. Move on, absorbing that experience into your life to learn and grow from.

This 5-step process gives you the opportunity to quickly and effectively process a mistake and be able to learn from and grow in a difficult circumstance. No one likes to fail, to make mistakes, it is humbling and most often painful. But the real tragedy is if we fail to learn from that mistake, and instead, repeat it over and over again without improvement. The truth is that failures often shape us much more than success does. Don’t be afraid to stand up in failure, learn from your mistakes, and grow in and through them.