What does success mean to you?
As you come along on this journey with me, ponder on the question above for ten seconds before we continue.
I have failed so many times, and every time I failed, it felt like a piece of me fell off with that failure. I know what it feels like to fail, feel like a failure, and succeed. It is a painful but insightful journey.
Now, I know that nobody wants to fail. Failure is not an experience anyone enjoys but the truth is you cannot avoid it. I often ask myself why failure has such a negative connotation and I realized that we naturally feel bad when things do not go according to plan, and that is fine.
However, there are two W’s to get out of every experience in life.
Whining, and
Winning.
You can either feel bad for failing and keep whining about how things are not working out, or feel bad for failing and prepare for your winning streak.
Failing does not make you a failure.
What does that mean?
When you fail at a task or activity, what happens is you do not meet the requirements or criteria for achieving what qualifies that task or activity as successful. Do you then cancel yourself or try to meet the requirements in your next attempt? Your response to this question determines your next success story or not.
Failure is a teachable experience.
When you define what success is to you, not what society or social media standards define for you, you will realize the need to embrace failure.
Here is the truth about failure.
You do not work to fail, but you learn how to succeed from failing until you fail at failure.
Not every dark horse represents evil. That is how I would like to describe failure, a dark horse. When you realize that proper hygiene and skin care can reveal the beauty of a dark horse, you learn to embrace more dark horses.
There is power in perspective and in taking action to grow rather than dwelling on your mistakes, setbacks, challenges, and missed opportunities.
How can one use failure to succeed?
There are practices to help you succeed when you fail and they do not require you to wave a magic wand (yet).
Accept your role in failing,
Understand that failure is part of the process,
Learn from every failure,
Practice mindfulness to stay focused,
Remember that trying again means you are doing something new,
Avoid repeating patterns that give you the same failed result,
Be open to change.
It is by embracing failure and learning from the experience that we can see what we did or did not do, what we missed, and what we can improve to achieve the success we desire and deserve.
Success is not linear but a cycle, and failure exists to prepare you for your next round of success. Embrace it and win.
"failure exists to prepare you for your next round of success" - this is it. Failure provides a baseline to improve upon, and the first building block in winning