What do you do when things don’t go according to plan? When you've put a lot of time and effort in it, only to be told no or things don't work out and you don't bear the fruits of what you had hoped for?
Do you give up or do you look for the lesson that you can learn and see how you can do things differently?
In a recent interview, I was asked if I have ever failed in life and my response was that I don’t like the word failure but prefer to view it as lessons learned. I think the word failure carries too many negative connotations and can be very debilitating. It causes many women to label themselves as not good enough or paralyses them from picking themselves up, moving on and trying again.
Failure causes many women to be fearful
For many women, previous experience of failure, or the thought of failing, causes them to fear going after what they really want in their careers and businesses. Instead, they choose to play it safe and stick with what they know. After all, they've been doing it year in year out, even if they don’t enjoy it. Even if it leaves them feeling unfulfilled.
Although you may not always realise it, we choose how we respond to our situations. This is not always a conscious choice but a choice that is often based on our previous experiences, whether good or bad.
A previous bad experience that has scarred us emotionally can have consequences further down the line, depending on how we respond to it. When we experience a setback, if we don’t put it into context, we can let it rule our emotions so much that in future situations, we try to protect ourselves by avoiding them.
Now this can have its advantages as it means that if we are in a dangerous situation, we will respond in a way that protects us. However, more often than not, we are not under the threat of a physical attack or our safety and security are not being threatened. But we react as if it is.
So what is a better way to respond when we are fearful of making changes that could be for our better good?
Put things into perspective.
Putting things into perspective helps you view your situation rationally
A client was doing a job that she did not enjoy. She had no motivation for the job but she did it because it paid the bills. A very creative person, she was doing work that didn't allow her to use her creativity. As a result she felt stifled, unfulfilled and it was affecting her self confidence. She wanted to start a business where she could use her creativity but a previous short spell of unemployment had left such a painful emotional scar on her, she wasn't doing anything about her situation. She feared going back to how things were during that period of unemployment.
Whilst it may be understandable that having had a previous bad bout of unemployment, someone might not want to go back there again, but how do you know that that is going to be the case now?
In the case of my client, when she put things into perspective, the period of unemployment paled into insignificance when put in to context of the number of years that she had been working. Putting things in to perspective helped her to see that there was no reason why things wouldn't work out for her. And in the event that it didn't, she was able to see that she was resourceful and it wouldn't be the end of her survival, she could do something else.
She had a choice. She could choose to stay as she was, not being her authentic self, being totally unfulfilled and demotivated by the work that she did. She could choose to carry on being fearful of making changes based on one very small period of her life that she had previously looked at out of context and magnified in her mind. Or she could choose to do something about it. She chose to do something about it.
What is the default position for your thoughts?
Too often we let the default position for our thoughts be that things are not going to work out when things have every chance of working out for us. We choose to focus on failing rather than succeeding.
When we focus on the negatives we deny ourselves a chance to explore the opportunities. And if all you are looking for to happen is that things won’t work out, well, that’s what you will get. Things won’t work out. You will only see the limitations rather than the possibilities that exist.
This doesn’t mean that you have to live in cloud cuckoo land because you do have to inject realism in to your situation. But by coming at it from a point of impossible, can’t, or it won’t work means you won’t be able to see further than that.
Approaching it from a place of opportunity opens you up to optimism and where there’s optimism there’s hope and where there’s hope there’s possibility. This is so much more energising and motivating don’t you think?
What are the lessons for you to learn from past failures?
If things haven’t worked out in the past, what are the lessons that you can learn? Did you do your research properly? Did you prepare properly? Did you have the right support around you? Maybe it just wasn't meant to work out at that moment in time. Maybe the circumstances weren't right. Or maybe there were lessons you needed to learn from it. It does not mean that what you are hoping for now is not going to work.
So when you are faced with making a change, whether it is going after the job you really want, pursuing the business that you've secretly wanted to start for ages, approach it with optimism, realism and learn the lessons from your past experiences.
As for my answer to the question, ‘have you ever failed in life’, if I am to view it in its literal sense, yes, I have failed and I am a failure. I've failed at many things over the years. But I choose to not view it as failure but lessons learned and no doubt, I still have many more lessons to learn because these lessons have helped to shape the person that I am today.
Do you let past experiences hold you back from pursuing what it is that you really want for your career, business or life? Or do you accept the lessons, learn from them and grow? What have you learnt?
Originally Published on LinkedIn.
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