In this article we get to talk about how to quickly turn failure into success.
Failure is something that’s largely misunderstood. Most people look at failure like it’s something to be avoided at all costs. Like failure is the worst thing possible.
It’s not.
In fact, they should rename the word ‘failure’ to ‘growth‘. Failing at something isn’t a bad thing. It looks terrible because it often puts you back to a similar position you started in, and you feel like you’ve wasted your energy and time.
Yet, failure is the exact same thing as growth, in essence.
Why do we fail?
We fail at things because we are not yet ready to successfully achieve them. There are areas where our knowledge and skill-set is lacking. And that shows through.
We fail because we have not yet learned everything there is to learn about what we’re doing.
Is it important to fail?
Here’s the truth; failing at something will improve your knowledge and learning curve much faster than simply reading up on things through the use of books and course.
It’s crucial to fail. For you to become the person you want to be, you have to fail on a regular basis to grow! And that failure can be small or large. Either way, you’ve got to fail.
The word failure, doesn’t make any sense until you give up on yourself. Until then, it should be regarded as growth.
4 Simple Reasons Why You Failed At Something
Before we get into the logical steps to transforming your failure into success, you need to first be able to understand the possible reasons as to why you failed.
If you have no idea, you’ll never be able to improve your knowledge in the future to actually be successful.
Here’s 4 reasons why you failed:
1. You gave up too easily
The most common cause of failure is people giving up too easily. Maybe you’re not seeing results after 3 months, 6 months, a year, and you think that there’s no point continuing.
The things is, that success takes time. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to achieve, it will take longer than a year to do so, whether you like it or not. So even if you’re not seeing results after a year, it doesn’t mean you have to give up.
What it actually means is that you’ve put in a year of groundwork, and built a strong base for future success. Don’t let that effort you’ve already put in go to waste.
2. You weren’t ready to succeed
What I mean by this point is that a lot of people can’t handle change. Change is rapid in life, especially when you’re setting high aims for yourself.
So, you might not have been ready for big changes, or you might have thought you were ready, and then didn’t handle it like you should’ve done.
Look at it like this: what would you do if all your dreams and goals were achieved instantly. If you could have them all right now. Would you honestly want to take them all now? And if you did, would you be able to handle it?
See, failure makes us stronger, and that’s how we become the person who’s ready to achieve our goals.
3. You were too afraid to fail (ironically)
Some people fail early on because they’re too afraid to fail! That’s actually a thing! People fail because they’re scared of what will happen if they fail later down the line.
Maybe they will have put too much effort, money and time into their endeavors, and to fail at that point would be too devastating to handle.
If you’re seriously at the stage where you’ve only just started working towards your goals, and you want to give up because you’re scared of failing in the future, then you’re in the wrong mindset.
When you have dreams and goals, that mindset will never ever get you there. Of course it won’t, because you’ll quit every time.
4. You hadn’t failed enough
Like I said, failure should be called growth. And we often fail because we are not yet strong enough or knowledgeable enough to succeed.
So if failure is growth, the logical step is to fail more to grow stronger and become more likely and able to succeed. Maybe the root cause of your failure is that you haven’t failed enough, ie. you haven’t grown enough.
How to Turn Failure Into Success
Onto the main topic of the article: how to turn failure into success. Let’s go through the logical steps as to how you can begin to understand your failures and be able to quickly transform these experiences into success next time around.
Here are 7 steps to turn failure into success:
1. Understand Where You Went Wrong
We created an extra section to the article above, specifically to highlight this point in more detail. Understanding where you’re going when failing is such an important step, because it helps you to correct those issues going forward.
When you experience small failures, maybe on a daily or weekly basis, this step is normally a simple one, and easy to correct.
You might not even be including those circumstances as failure since they can be fixed almost instantly.
When you experience failure, the first step is to understand where you went wrong.
2. Realize That Mistakes Aren’t A Bad Thing
If you taken anything from this article so far, it’s probably that mistakes are a good thing. Mistakes allow you to see where you’ve gone wrong and correct it for next time.
Also, here’s an interesting thing to mention.
There are a lot of people who reach success without failing, yet they’re making all the same mistakes you’re making. How do they become successful? There’s one factor or another that’s able to push them enough towards success.
The issue is that mistakes always catch up to people. So the success that you see from these people isn’t sustainable. It’ll all come crashing down if they’re not careful.
This is exactly why it’s important to learn from mistakes through failure, and not to achieve a certain level of success before it all comes crashing down on you.
3. Don’t Ride Yourself Too Hard
Don’t ride yourself too hard when you fail. It’s often unavoidable. It’s not all your fault. It’s a learning experience.
The more you sink yourself into depression for failing, the harder it is to be able to turn failure into success. If you’re so set on blaming yourself, you’re more likely to give up entirely.
Who knows, it may motivate you even more, but it’s not healthy to blame yourself. Just recognize why something’s gone wrong, and what you need to do to correct it.
4. The Past Creates us, But Does Not Define us
One of the crucial things to realize, whether a relationship turns bad, your business goes bankrupt or you lose your job, is that those things do not define us.
All those bad things may have happened to us, but they don’t define who we are. We are not defined purely by our failures.
What past occurrences do, is create us. We have to go through a lot of growth in order to get over these tough circumstances and come through the other side a happy individual.
But just because you experience failure, that doesn’t make you a failure.
5. Learn From the Mistakes You Made
I know, you’re probably thinking this is the exact same point as the others I made earlier on.
“Why are you making the same point twice, Dan?”
It’s one thing to recognize your mistakes, but it’s another thing to learn from them. If you can actually take a single mistake, pick it out, realize that it’s a point where you’ve gone wrong, and then learn from it… that’s a great thing.
That there, is pure growth.
After realizing the mistake you made, understand what made you make it in the first place, and how you can stop yourself from making this same mistake twice.
6. You Cannot Succeed if You Are Afraid to Fail
One of the reasons why you’re likely to have failed, that we pointed out earlier, is the fear of failure.
Which is incredibly ironic, don’t you think?
You fail because you’re afraid to fail.
How crazy is that?
This, quite simply is a mindset issue that needs to be fixed. The state of mind that someone would have to be in to think this, is incredibly negative.
And before you can continue, you’ll need to work on transforming your mindset to become a more positive and confident individual.
7. Get Back up and Try Again
Without a doubt, doing everything else and then skipping this stage makes you a total failure. If you’re not getting back up and trying again, then what’s the point, right?
You fail, you learn, you get back up, you try again. You fail again, and the cycle repeats itself until you eventually have learnt so much that you can’t fail.
4 Benefits of Experiencing Failure
Wow! We’ve been through all the crucial steps to help you turn failure into success!
Now, it’s time to give you a little motivation. A few of the benefits of experiencing failure:
1. Growth
The #1 benefit of failure; growth. I’ve said it before an I’ll say it again. Failure is growth. There’s no doubt about it. So when you fail, you have two choices: give up or grow. That’s it. You can give up or you can grow.
2. Gratitude
It’s not as easy as you thought it was, right?
It’s hard to start that business. It’s hard to get that job. It’s hard to find and keep the perfect partner. It’s hard to get in shape.
This s**t is hard! And so when you fail, it humbles you. You learn more about how hard success is, and you become more grateful for what you have.
When you realize that you don’t know it all yet, that’s when you start to be more humble and grateful for success.
3. Resiliency
Get used to failure, and you become a resilient beast. Every time you get knocked back, you’ll that it’s just a part of the process. That’s all it is, and you’re gonna pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again.
The more times you get back up, the more resilient you become.
4. Success
Last of all, with failure comes success. Fail enough and you’ll eventually become successful. If you still needed an incentive to get back up after failure, here it is.
Sometimes the only way to become successful is to continuously experience failure.
Summary
We’re at the end of the article on how to turn failure into success. So let’s quickly recap on all the points we made in this article, to help you do just that.
Here are 4 reasons why you failed at something:
- You gave up too easily
- You weren’t ready to succeed
- You were too afraid to fail (ironically)
- You hadn’t failed enough
7 steps to help you turn failure into success:
- Understand where you went wrong
- Realize that mistakes aren’t a bad thing
- Don’t ride yourself too hard
- The past creates us, but does not define us
- Learn from the mistakes you made
- You cannot succeed if you are afraid to fail
- Get back up and try again
4 benefits of experiencing failure:
- Growth
- Gratitude
- Resiliency
- Success
In Conclusion
All in all, we seriously believe failure should be renamed to ‘growth’. Who’s with me?
This word failure only becomes real when we finally give up on ourselves. Otherwise, all it is, is a process. It’s a process of growth, helping you to become the person you want to be, one step at a time.
Hopefully this article has helped you to understand a little more about failure, and how you can quickly learn from any mistakes you make. Now you know how to turn failure into success.