FAILURE. It’s a scary word in our society. It’s imbued with fear, shame, and judgement. I’m going to encourage you to change your definition of failure:
Feedback
Always
Informs
Learning
(Unless
Rejected
Emotionally)
When we fail, what’s actually happening is that our experience is teaching us something — either about ourselves or about our environment. We can learn how to better prepare ourselves for future events or we can learn that our environment is not entirely in our control and therefore not something on which to expend energy.
IF we use our rational minds to view our failures through a lens of learning, then we can easily see what we need to change and how that might lead to a different outcome. IF, however, we use our emotional minds and view our failures through a lens of feeling, we often get bogged down in shame and embarrassment. Failing and being a failure are very different things. I don’t believe that anyone can BE a failure.
Approach every single opportunity as a chance to learn — about an activity, about a subject, about yourself, about others, about your environment — and you will start to change how you respond to your mistakes. You will see them as helpful information rather than personal failings.
And THEN, you are UNSTOPPABLE.
