Inspired by @Matthew Richter's recent posts on the impact of failure, I reflected on how I try to increase its positive impact and reduce the negative impact. Here are some techniques I use before getting unhinged by failure and feeling that the sky is falling down:
- Don’t let other people define my “failure”. Use my own judgement and criteria. Redefine my failure as a stepping-stone to learning.
- Feel the pain of failure, but don’t ruminate on it. Also, avoid unhealthy passive escape routes like being absorbed in reading murder mysteries.
- Don’t make it personal. Don’t damage my self-esteem. Don’t play the victim role. Take the appropriate responsibility for my share in what happened.
- Take a time out. Sleep over my failure. Do something else to give myself space.
- Debrief myself. Ask myself how I feel. Put specific emotional labels to my reactions to “failure”. Accept my feelings.
- Remember, “failure” is a trigger for resilient learning and adaptation.
- Analyze the cause of the “failure”. Avoid the personalizing the fundamental error: Stop attributing the cause to my character defects. Conduct a performance analysis: Make a list of situational and environmental causes.
- Work backward from the “failure” to causes and to new skills and knowledge. Use “failure” as a trigger for learning. Determine how I would act differently the next time in the same situation.
- To prevent future “failure”, change my behaviors. Or change the goal I was trying to achieve. Specify a more realistic goal.
- Plan my next step. Come up with action items for recouping from the “failure”. Take one of these action items and implement it immediately.
conceptual art and experience design practitioner & teacher, participatory design, cooperative learning, non-conventional facilitation, systems, agile communities, Sanskrit & Pali studies
3 年Prerna Jain
The Thiagi Group and Co-Organizer of The Learning Development Accelerator
3 年I love this! And Thiagi has been brilliantly (as always) commenting on each of my failure series posts: THE DEFINITION OF FAILURE: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/matthew-richter-0738b84_lda-failure-traininganddevelopment-activity-6831946366156099584-644s THE IMPACT OF FAILURE: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/matthew-richter-0738b84_failure-learninganddevelopment-resilience-activity-6836300038667325440-oTQc THE CAUSES OF FAILURE: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/matthew-richter-0738b84_failure-learning-criticalthinking-activity-6836652560317771776-En87 Tomorrow is aligned on Thiagi's article, THE WAYS WE CAN REACT TO FAILURE. And future posts are on the non-affective approaches for dealing with failure or preventing failure when needed.
Senior Instructional Systems Designer
3 年Excellent approach. Your suggestions would have helped when I had my first experience with a total fail. I'll be ready next time