103. You Did Not Fail

Apr 6

You did not fail. It doesn’t matter what moment you’re thinking about, beating yourself up over, or stuck on a thought loop about - you did not fail. What you did do is learn a way that doesn’t work. You found something that didn’t work at that moment - let’s find out what happens when you learn and grow from those failures.

Any failure is only a failure at that moment.

How can you reframe this failure?

What happens if you try again in a different moment?

How can you learn and grow from that failure?

Listen to Episode 103 Here

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Your Failure Is Only in That Moment

We all have perceived failures. When those things we really want don’t work out the way we would prefer. I think, especially when we wear a lot of hats and have many different roles, we’re more prone to believe that we’re failing because we have more opportunities and more space to fail.

But what if I told you that those failures are only failures in those moments? This is where having, or developing, a growth mindset really comes into play. When you can learn from your failure or try again using the exact same method, just at a different moment, you might be pleasantly surprised to see yourself succeed.

I like to use these perceived failures to reevaluate my life and my priorities. Why did I fail? Do the circumstances that led to the failure need to change to allow for success? Does it actually matter to me that I didn’t succeed?

Reframe Your Failures for Success

I encourage you to collect data from your perceived failure. What circumstances led to the failure? What were you doing in the moments that caused the failure? How can you use that data to maybe even look at the exact same situation as a success? Did you learn that something just doesn’t work in your life?

I want you to reframe these failures. What if those moments where you think you failed could actually be a success right now? How do you need to change your mindset and thoughts about them?

The other way you can approach and learn from your failures is to develop different expectations for yourself. Whose lens are you seeing this failure from? Are your expectations for yourself a lot tougher than if you saw someone else fail in the same way you just did? Let that sink in.

I want you to start thinking about different failures that aren’t actually failures. Think about how you can reframe those thoughts so you can stay in the space of a growth mindset and continue to do such amazing things.

In This Episode

How to define failure [4:00]
Why having more roles gives you more opportunity to believe you’ve failed [6:00]
How having a growth mindset lets you grow and reevaluate your life and priorities [6:45]
How to use data collection to turn a perceived failure into a success [11:45]
What happens when you reframe your past experience with failure [18:30]
How developing different expectations can help change your failure narrative [26:30]

Quotes

“You didn’t fail. You’re just learning ways that it didn’t work. You found ways that it didn’t work during this particular time, but it doesn’t mean that this way may not work in the future.” [4:22]

“How it shifted for me is that nothing went wrong, there was no failure because what happened, happened. What is, is. How am I taking the opportunity that did occur to go ahead and enrich things right now? We can always bring it back to the present.” [10:29]

“Throw away all the thoughts of your past that made exercise seem like such a failure and ask yourself how it can become a strong point in your life? How can exercise be something that you look forward to?” [26:09]