Is Failure Fatal or the Ultimate Redirection for Good?

Beyond Your Default

"Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday." — Wilma Rudolph

Feeling like you've failed at something sucks. But how should you handle and react to that failure? That depends on who you ask. In some of the more toxic positivity-loving pockets of the growth mindset crowd, you may be coached to overlook uncomfortable feelings, because to sit with your feelings is demonstrative of a weak mind who is unable to look at life through an unflinchingly "logical," growth-focused lens.

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Of course, the other extreme isn't great either. Wallowing in self-pity, lapsing potentially into a victim mentality, and allowing failure to color your ability to move forward is also equally destructive.

As a process-loving gal, I love when there are a simple set of instructions to follow in complex situations — a playbook you can whip out, whatever the case may be, that will guide you through whatever wilderness you find yourself in. Unfortunately, that's not quite how failure works.

Failures come in all shapes and sizes. In some cases, yes, we made a mistake, and we have to pick ourselves back up and take the lessons we've learned with us as we move forward. In other cases, we may not have failed at all, we just can't see the big picture yet.

⚡ Go Deeper: What It Means to Forgive Others (+ Why It Matters)

Or, we're going to look back on a "failure" as the best thing that ever happened to us. Heck, sometimes we only think we failed because someone told us we did — by their standards. In reality, however, we're doing just fine, and we should be listening to our own compass instead.

So, this week, George and I dive into the deep end of failure. We share personal stories of failure, discuss the importance of grit and resilience, and talk about the importance of being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings. A great companion episode to this is our conversation about cultivating your ability to practice self-compassion and forgiveness.

Questions We Discuss

• How did early failures in our lives color how we contextualized failure in our lives?
• How do we define our relationship with failure now?
• Why does failure hurt so much?
• How does the toxic positivity movement play into how some of us try to address our own failures?
• In hindsight, what failures in our lives were actually blessings in disguise?
• How do we handle folks in our lives who will always perceive us as failures, by their standards?
• What do you see as the key differences between folks who are able to bounce back from failures and those who get stuck?
• What's worse than failure? And what would a life completely devoid of failure look like?
• How can someone who struggles with fatalistic or catastrophic thinking work to shift their perspectives on the failures in their own lives?

Essential Companion Episodes

• Victim vs. Victor Mentality: Knowing + Living the Difference
  In the heat of the moment, when anger or fear flashes through our bodies, it can feel easier (healing or cathartic, even!) to point at the world and yell, "Why are you doing this to me?!"
• Forgiveness, Part II: The Healing Power of Forgiving Ourselves
  Much like other "big life concepts" such as love and happiness, our ability to express and bestow forgiveness to others begins with our ability to find forgiveness and self-compassion within.

Failure Resources

• Why Some People Succeed After Failure When Others Flounder (Northwestern University)
• 7 Ways to Bounce Back Stronger After Failure (Forbes)
• How Do You Bounce Back from Failure? (AskReddit)
• How to Transform Failure into a Positive Experience (NIH)
• Strategies for Learning From Failure (HBR)