Have you ever felt like a complete failure?
Chances are, you’ve done something that hasn’t gone quite as you’ve expected it to. It’s so easy to think that we have failed when that happens. Or worse – to think that we are a failure.
It can be easy to feel sorry for ourselves and say, “Oh it didn’t work out, and I’m such a loser.”
Or, “Other people have it all together, and I’ll never be like them.”
Or, “I’ll never win.”
“I’ll never be good enough.”
“I just can’t do it.”
“I’ll never get in shape.”
“I’ll never get out of debt.”
The thing about these perceived failures is that they are not actually failures. They are just results.
They are results from trying, and if you’re trying, that means you’re putting yourself out there. It means you are not playing it safe, but instead willing to try something new, something different – a new way of life, a new job, a new relationship, a new lifestyle.
Let me say that again: It means you are putting yourself out there. And that is not failure.
Tony Robbins said,
“There are no failures, only outcomes. As long as I learn something, I am succeeding.”
So the trick is to make sure you are learning from your mistakes.
We are not going to get things “right” every time. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Through failures, through setbacks or roadblocks – that is where we can truly learn. If everything was easy, either you wouldn’t do it or you wouldn’t learn from it. Not the same way you would if it’s challenging.
I think back to my first experience with 75 Hard, a mental toughness challenge I attempted last year. I was a good chunk of the way through the 75 day challenge when I didn’t complete all of my tasks one day and had to start the program over. It was heartbreaking. I thought I had not only failed, but that I was a failure for that. Thank God for friends who can talk me through tough emotions. With her help I was able to make a mindset shift, learn from my set back, and then carry on with the program. I still never fully completed, despite starting over several times, but with each set back, I learned something.
I can also go back even further, to one of my most defining lessons that came from what felt like failure.
In the seventh grade, I started running for the school’s track team. I was entered into the 1600 m or 1-mile event at our first track meet of the season. The gun shot at the starting line, and we were off. I quickly pulled ahead of the pack and led the first couple of laps around the track. My coaches and teammates were cheering loudly as I passed. It was exhilarating, and I felt great.
And then – you guessed it – I started to gas out. Slowly other girls started passing me. One by one, I moved farther back in the pack. I had somehow missed the lesson from my coach about not starting out too fast. And man, I had started out too fast.
By the final lap, I was not only physically beaten, but emotionally and mentally defeated too. And you know what I did? I quit. I gave up. I looked at my coach standing on the inside of the track, and I said, “I can’t do it.”
I walked off the track without finishing the race feeling like the lowest of the low. My coach was disappointed. My teammates didn’t talk to me. I felt like I had not only completely failed, but that I was a failure.
For most people, lessons learned in seventh grade aren’t life altering. But for me, it was. What I learned – and not until years later when I started running again and reflected on the event – was not that I had failed or that I was a failure, but that I had simply given up.
When I started running again in 2007, many, many years after middle school track meets had ended, I was able to remember what it felt like at that track meet that day. And because of that lesson through “failure,” I haven’t had to repeat it again.
My most recent physical challenge was to climb not only one, but two, fourteeners in Colorado. Do you think I thought about quitting? Absolutely. And more than once.
But because I have lived through those feelings of failure once before – what it feels like to give up before the finish line – I made myself keep going.
So go on, put yourself out there.
Make a mistake.
Make A LOT of mistakes.
And then learn from them. Learn a lot. Learn so much that you never have to repeat the mistake again. Or maybe you will. And that’s okay too.
And after that? Just keep going.
Until next time,
This has been one of my biggest mindset shifts in the last few months as I am starting my own business. I can get wrapped up in trying to make whatever I am working on (posts, programs, flyers, myself, etc.) the best possible version before releasing it out into the world…which often means it never makes it out of my head. This season has been about embracing “messy and done” and “build it as I go”. Switching my mindset from being the judge of “pass or fail” to a researcher mentality of collecting the data of what worked and what didn’t and make adjustments accordingly. Not only has it been an absolute blast to give myself permission to be a fumbling and stumbling newbie, it is also releasing more creativity and joy.
I love that! So often as creators, we can get caught up in having the perfect product, that we never hit “send.” Good for you for giving yourself a pass to be messy and to get it done!