You Will Fail - And It's Invaluable to Your Personal Growth

???You’re going to fail. Of course you will. You have almost certainly experienced failures on multiple occasions in your life to this point. I know, this isn’t much of an inspirational “pep” talk, but it is a reality check. Failure is as inevitable as death, change, and taxes. It’s happened to you and it will happen again.

????Failure is as natural to the process of learning, growing, finding fulfillment and succeeding as breathing is to us. Because nothing good ever comes easy, there’s always a risk of a less than desirable outcome. It’s natural, and it’s meaningful. If you waited on the sidelines of life until you “knew” you’d succeed and that no risk of a bad outcome existed, you’d never get in the game! Alfred Lord Tennyson said “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” To paraphrase - It’s better to have tried and failed, then never to have tried at all. The comfort zone has you living half a life – one without failure and sorrow, but how can you know triumph and joy unless you step out of your front door and out into the world?

????Failure is a part of how we learn, grow, and eventually find success; in fact, it often teaches us more about ourselves and the task at hand than achievement does. Consistent achievement can make us arrogant and complacent – which is a good way to ensure more failure in the future. There’s an old proverb that says, “The master has failed more times than the student has even tried.”

????Failure is a necessary input; it tells us what doesn’t work. While it’s true that we avoid learning what doesn’t work through experience if we can, being a part of the process of failure offers you invaluable insight that can’t be gained from afar. You experience the problems, the nuances, the unexpected cause and effect at close range – and by doing so, you’ve got better information that helps you adjust course for the next stage in your journey to success. You can either ruminate yourself into inaction or take note of the lessons learned from failure and apply them to increase your chances of future success. Self-pity or self-development; you get to choose.

????Criticism, rejection, and failure aren’t unique to you. When you’re swirling in the midst of it you might feel like life has singled you out unfairly, but that’s just a loss of perspective when negative emotions take over. No; the fates aren’t being particularly cruel just to you. It happened because it happens to everybody now and again.

????It hurts because we identify ourselves with the product of our actions – ego causes failure to cling to our self-esteem and drag it down. It tells us that we are our failure and our rejection. It isn’t something that’s happened to us, it is us. It’s the double-edged sword that means, along with identifying ourselves with our successes we also do so for our failures. Think of the phrases “I am failure.” “I am rejection.” It’s rather depressing just to utter aloud, and yet this is what we can tell ourselves in our heads again and again when things don’t go our way.?

????You are NOT failure. You are NOT rejection. Any sane person would tell you this - including you when you gain some perspective on the issue. Failures and rejections are events, and you are not the events of your life - anymore than you could say “I am my 24th Birthday” or “I am that 5k running race I completed.” That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Criticism, Rejection and failure are things you experience. They are events with an end, if you allow them to end.

????Ego tells you to fear failure, criticism and rejection because ego convincingly lies to you, telling you that these events are part of who you are. They’re not. They are just events that happen on your life’s journey. You get to decide what these events mean to you, and how they shape your path. Just remember that both “good” and “bad” events happen; it’s how you respond and the emotions you attach to them that determine their effect on your life. Your life is written in pen, not pencil. There are no “re-takes.” This means that you do the best you can as you go along and you will make mistakes. You will stumble. Not everyone will say nice things about you. You won’t experience acceptance everywhere, all the time. Life’s too precious and too special to be neatly mapped out with certainty – and how boring would that be! We do get to choose what each step on the journey means, however.

????Leaders who are petrified of failure – and instill that fear in their teams – do a disservice to themselves and their organizations. Of course, we’d all rather succeed than fail, but there’s a difference between those who plan and work to avoid it and those who run scared from it as if it’s a disease. That’s simply not good leadership, and if you’ve ever seen a leader who berates others incessantly, crucifying them whenever mistakes are made, you’ll understand the toxic culture that pervades such teams.

????Leaders are risk managers and what we hope to avoid are the big mistakes and repeated mistakes. Working to minimize the chances of these happening is good leadership, and is how they and their teams gain credibility and a record of consistent achievement. Mistakes will happen also, and how you respond as a leader will either fuel innovation and learning amongst your team or kill it – and create a culture of fear in the team instead.

????I have seen senior leaders, using the excuse of “chasing perfection” or “creating a high accountability culture” treat others extremely poorly – subjecting them to verbal executions in public meetings, or making them live in fear of their weekly one-on-one meetings to the extent that I’ve had to spend time talking them off the emotional ledge before or after such meetings. The only thing staff learn in such cases is to: 1) avoid mistakes and failure rather than chase innovation and success 2) Shift the blame if at all possible when problems happen so they can avoid verbal beatings, and 3) update their resume’ and start looking for an environment where they can succeed and feel appreciated.

????Progressive leaders help their teams avoid failure and mistakes, while at the same time understanding that they are a natural part of life’s experience. When mistakes and failures occur, they help lift others back up to their feet and learn from their experience in order to grow stronger for the next challenge to be faced. Such leaders remember that they, too, have made mistakes and failed in past and they help ensure they don’t continue to loom over others like a dark cloud. They do that by creating a culture that prepares for success, but learns from setbacks in order to innovate and improve.? When leaders embrace failure as an opportunity to help the team shape a better path towards success – an instill that perspective on failure in others – then they create a strong sense of loyalty and mutual support amongst the team.

·????????How do you treat failure; as something to be feared and avoided at all costs, or a natural event on the way to success that you can learn and grow from?

·????????When you act what do you keep in mind most; achieving success or avoiding failure?

·????????How do you treat mistakes; are you extremely hard or yourself, or do you show yourself some compassion?

·????????How closely do you align your sense of identity with your successes and failures? Are they just events in your life, or do you believe they are a part of who you are?

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