How To Overcome Failure
Failure first of all is great. You might think I am mad for saying that, but it is! I categorise failure in two different ways;
Macro Failure - This is a proper fail, like going out of business sort of failure.
Micro Failure - Everything else.
Now some could argue that everything is a micro fail. If it didn't kill you, then did you truly fail? I guess not. But if you consider that going bankrupt, or loosing a business is the only real macro fail, then you'll quickly realise that every fail you have had until now probably isn't that big!
We have ALL had failures. Absolutely all of us. It could be that we made a slight error in calculating something that meant we messed up a massive order. It could be that we tried to do something over and over and just couldn't do it no matter how hard we tried. It could be that we simply made an error in judgement!
I have had huge failures, one of them could be classed as a macro failure! That's right.. I went out of business. Alcohol Angel was a business that me and my partner created a good year back. We went to a wholesalers, purchased a ton of alcohol, set up a website and social media platforms and we created an alcohol delivery service for the times that shops were shut and people would want alcohol the most (AKA after party territory). We stayed up till the early hours every single night, got a little bit of hype around the idea via social media.. and waited for our first order to roll in. Except that before that could happen... the council shut us down!
In our excitement to create a new business, we hadn't properly looked at the rules of selling alcohol, had not realised that we needed a trading licence and didn't give a thought to the fact that there may be rules associated! The business was shut down before we even made a sale!
We turned that failure into learning.
You have to fail. I truly believe that if you have not failed then it means you are not taking enough chances or risks that are needed to succeed. We purposely don't take these chances in order to protect ourselves.. it makes total sense! But we should take them.. see where they get us!
If you are a firefighter then you are already winning.. because success is a whole load of fighting fires! Just know that if failure happens, it means it is your time to learn. It is your time to say, 'and what?'. What can you do about it. Probably nothing to reverse it, but you can certainly move forwards.
Train your mind-set and your environment to react to these failures in a smart and positive way. Use these next points to try to overcome the failure and to move on from it!
1. Don't care what people say. If anyone has an opinion on your failure then forget it.
2. Work out how you got to this point. Did something go wrong? Did you make an error?
3. Take accountability. Say 'okay, I failed at this'. You may not have a clue why you failed at this point, but regardless... Re-focus. Go all in on a new strategy, you have no choice!
4. Keep up the momentum. Even if this shift in your life was unexpected, or the failure was not obvious to you, keep going! You may fail 100x over... but it will be worth it!
Remember... see any kind of failure as a learning curve and shift it from a negative to a positive. You will learn a hell of a lot more from failure than you will from plain sailing through life!
With Love,
Leanne xx
