Master the skill of embracing failure

When you’re afraid of failing, you limit what’s possible. When you aren’t afraid to fail, the possibilities are endless. I know, bold statement. But it is true.

Mastering the skills to embrace failure will change your life. When you aren’t afraid to fail, anything is possible. Before I discovered the concept of embracing failure, I turned down jobs because I was scared. I skipped classes because of embarrassment and said “No” when my heart was saying “Yes!” The problem was I woke up to this fact and realised that if I wanted my life to be different, I had to make a change.

Failure happens to everyone. It’s not if you will fail, but rather how well you will survive it when it does happen. 

We have been hardwired to avoid and deny negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Sure negative feelings feel unpleasant… and sure, we have a lot of reasons as to why we shouldn’t let them bother us. But you’d be surprised at the power.

Rather than avoiding those negative emotions, it’s helpful to know how to deal with the different emotions to create positive results in your life.

Our primitive brains see it as a threat, as dangerous to our survival. Things that vibrate in the lower energetic frequency range, such as fear, anger, guilt, shame, sadness, and greed, are perceived as negative. Since these emotions relate to fight and flight responses from our past experiences of being attacked as predators or prey, it makes sense why we have been trained to avoid these emotions altogether.

The thing I have found as a life coach is that “failure” is a pretty loaded term in our society. Many of us believe that failure is the end of the road…something we need to avoid at all costs. But failure can be just one more step on the path to success if you are willing and able to learn something from it and put it in perspective. Sure, sometimes a failure might indicate something bigger going on, but often, it’s not. We’ve all failed many times over. The issue isn’t necessarily that we fail but rather how we handle ourselves after failure.

Have you ever worked hard on something only to have it all fall apart?

You’ve thought about it before. That gut-wrenching feeling when you feel stuck in your career or are going nowhere leads to the inevitable questions running through your head. “What if I quit?” “Should I look for a new job?” “Am I doomed to this dead-end job forever?”

When you feel stuck in your career, it’s easy to mentally and emotionally beat yourself up. Whether it’s a bad day or a week, you feel your world has become a negative place. Maybe you’re thinking: “Why did I have to be fired? Why am I struggling with my performance review? Why can’t this boss see that I’m not doing a good job?” If any of these thoughts sound familiar, understand that career failure often only positions you for more growth, opportunity, and success in the future.

Things happen when we dial in our focus, increase our failure tolerance, and take massive action on our goals through to completion. Our lives transform. It’s not unrealistic thinking that creates unlikely circumstances and opportunities; it’s unreasonable thinking that keeps them from happening.

The key to growth is failure.

But in fact most people are taught differently. 

They think failure is a bad thing.

Failure means you’re evolving.

Failure means you’re learning.

Failure means that you’re one step closer to where you want to be.

So ask yourself this: how are you failing today, and how is it making you more of who you want to be?