Repositioning & Avoiding “Failure” in 2020

Too many of us judge our life by success and failure. You may be thinking, “Well, duh. What else would you judge growth and happiness, aka life, by?” You’re not completely wrong in thinking this. Successes and failures ARE points to measure life by - but we first have to reposition how we think of the word failure and the word success.

“Success” and “failure” are just data points in your timeline of learning. 

You’re going to have successes and you’re going to have failures, but they are all just data points in your timeline of learning. Stop measuring your life by what you’re assuming success and failure to be and, instead, start measuring yourself from a learning curve standpoint. It will help reposition your day-to-day mindset and help you achieve growth and happiness in the long-term.

Repositioning how you think of failure and success as bumps in the path and not mountains will also help you to be less afraid to fail, and consequently help you to avoid failure more often. This may sound a little counterintuitive, but it’s the fear of making mistakes that keeps you from being successful and if you’re not succeeding, you’re failing. 

Avoiding Failure in 3 Simple Steps

I do want to be clear that there is such a thing as real, catastrophic failure. Especially if you continue to not learn from your failures and repeatedly keep making the same mistakes. It will not help you in your career or life to reposition the way you think of failure and then give yourself a free pass and say it was just a learning experience. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again but expect different results, that’s the definition of insanity.

The steps to avoiding failure and repeating your mistakes is preparation, don’t be a Yes, Man, and balancing purpose and passion.

Preparation

The number one reason I believe people fail, and fail hard, is they don’t prepare, and they repeatedly put themselves in situations they’re not prepared for. Insane, right? And it’s not always intentional. We get caught up in our day-to-day tasks and don’t take the time to think about what we’re really doing. Some of us continue to barrel ahead and make the same mistakes but don’t understand why. So the first step in avoiding failure, is preparation. 

DON’T be a “Yes” Person

Step two to avoiding failure is don’t be a “Yes” person and set yourself up to fail. Be aware of what you can actually achieve in a limited period of time and don’t say yes because you can get it done. Say yes if you can get it done to the best of your ability. 

Saying yes to adventure is one thing. Saying yes, yes, yes and filling your plate so high you don’t even have a chance to succeed will lead to perpetual failure, just like not preparing. You could be really great at your job, the best even, but if you put too much on yourself, you’ll never be successful. Unfortunately, I think this is one of the biggest problems achievers have because we don’t like to say no, but then we don’t deliver our best results, and this often leads to imposter syndrome in the best of us because we’re failing for some reason.

(Source: The Imposter Syndrome Part 1)

Balance Passion & Purpose

The last step to avoiding failure is to align your learning path with things you enjoy doing. It’s interesting how the more passionate about something we are the more work we can put in and still be happy. But also, on the other hand, how we can really enjoy doing something and still constantly fail at it. The universe will tell you overtime if your passion is aligned to your purpose or if it’s not the right path for you. 

What are the things that you loved doing in one job or area of your life that you can apply to something else that you could be great at? Aligning your learning path to something that gives you joy (passion) and that you’re good at (purpose) will give you a much higher likelihood of being able to reposition the term failure in your mind as a learning experience that will move you to where you’re supposed to be.

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It’s up to you to reposition what you consider failure and what you consider success. Whether you see them as data points in the timeline of learning or visualize them as just bumps in your path up and down the mountain, the number one thing I hope you take away from forming this new mindset is you have to look at and be thoughtful about the larger picture.