In our culture, most people are programmed to fear what we call failure. Failure is basically expecting a positive result and getting a negative one after trying. We have all failed at some point in our lives: losing a race in athletics, failing an exam, a relationship that didn’t work out, being fired from a company or failing in a business.
For some reason, as we get older, instead of getting much better at taking those small unfavourable results in our stride, the exact opposite happens: we fear failure more and more.
Here we draw on the view that Tony Robbins puts forward in his book Unlimited Power, where he proposes changing the way we perceive failure.
What Robbins proposes is to see failure for what it really is: a result, or an outcome. When we try something (which is already far more than most people do), we will always get a result of one kind or another. And both kinds are valid.
Great successful entrepreneurs are not infallible. They don’t always succeed, but unlike the vast majority, what makes them successful entrepreneurs is their mindset: if they try something and it doesn’t turn out as expected, at least they have had an experience to learn from. See: These 8 people had big failures before achieving success.
We are not trying to sell the beauty of failure, because it has none. In fact, failing sometimes hurts a lot, and if you dwell on it too much it can end up frustrating you.
Once failure arrives…
As we said, nobody is immune to failure. What sets winners apart from everyone else is that the typical successful person, once they run into failure, gathers the lessons from what went wrong, corrects the mistakes and applies what they have learned in a new attempt, which leads to a new result.
For most people, on the other hand, failure knocks them down emotionally, and worse, some think they have simply been very unlucky (as if they had bought a lottery ticket and not won).
Robbins recommends asking yourself this question after one or more failures: what asset or benefit do I have today that I didn’t have yesterday? The answer, without a doubt, is experience. And experience is what helps you achieve success.
People who fear failure tend to build internal representations of everything that could go wrong. That very focus is what stops them from taking the actions that would produce the right result: success.
See also: How to recover after a business failure
Nobody should go out onto a football pitch playing not to lose. If you play not to lose, you will adopt defensive strategies that will stop you from winning. That’s why you should always go out to win. Then you may win or you may lose. If you win, congratulations. If you lose, learn from your opponents and from your own mistakes, and play better next time.
The best leaders, successful entrepreneurs and elite athletes (people with great personal power) understand perfectly that if you try something and the outcome is not what you expected, it is really feedback. In other words, they will use that information to fine-tune their approach to what they need to do to produce the result they want.
Everything we know, we know through trial and error, from our own mistakes and from other people’s. That’s why we should always listen to those who have already travelled the road and can help us avoid some mistakes.
Other people’s wisdom, whatever form it reaches us in (mentors, talks, books, interviews…), can be considered a shortcut to success. It is not true that you have to make certain mistakes in order to learn. I’m sure most of us know that fire burns because someone got burned before us or taught us that it burns. Nowadays you don’t need to end up in hospital with third-degree burns to understand what happens if the flames of a fire reach you.
What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?
This is the question asked by Dr Robert Schuller: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” According to Schuller, if you truly believe you cannot fail, you will set in motion a whole series of actions that could well produce new, powerful and desirable results.
If we avoid thinking about failure and simply imagine that one outcome or another is possible, then if the less favourable result arrives, all we have to do is change our actions and we will get a new result.
But to do that, we must first take responsibility for our results, because if we think they were caused by other people or by bad luck, our failures are of no use to us at all.
As we always say: there is nothing beautiful about failure, but once it arrives, it is only useful if we draw lessons from it. If we don’t even do that, it isn’t gaining experience; it is a real failure.
See also: 25 habits of successful people
Featured image: unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
