How to Fail Your Way to Success

Lately I have been thinking about how it is actually possible to fail your way to success.

I used to view failure as a liability, but I am starting to view it as a strength.

Here’s why.

It seems that it’s actually possible to fail our way to success.

Sometimes we feel like failures indicate a deep and permanent incapability.

But failure often means several important positive things:

One: You are taking steps and trying. Awesome job!

Two: You are gaining a lot of valuable wisdom about what doesn’t work.

Three: This is building a strong knowledge base about what does work.

So if you have failed recently, I know it’s easy to beat yourself up. I do that sometimes, too.

But I want to congratulate you instead for your awesome failure.

You are on the path to becoming really wise, and you may be failing your way to success.

Photo courtesy of Unsplash.

Here’s a good formula I have discovered for failing your way to success:

One: Show kindness and compassion to yourself in the midst of your failure because failure often does feel painful.

Two: Know that you possess intrinsic worth that exists separately from any of your accomplishments. Your failures never diminish this worth because your intrinsic worth comes from who you are, not what you do.

Three: When you do fail, take some time to reflect on what you learned about yourself and life from your mistake. I like this related phrase: “There is no failure–only feedback.”

When we experience what feels like failure, we can always view it instead as feedback and the chance to take the next step forward.

Four: Take some time to imagine your most cherished goals. (And dreams!)

These should be the kinds of goals that bring more goodness into your life and the life of other people.

How does your experience of failure teach you things that help you move a little bit closer to your goal?

A Parting Thought: I know that failures feel really painful sometimes. And if you have recently experienced a painful failure, I am sorry for those difficult feelings.

I want to encourage you that you possess intrinsic worth apart from any failures in your life, and that you have a purpose.

Your purpose is to bring your light into the world in your unique corner of the world.

And believe it or not, your failures are the perfect opportunity to gain more wisdom so that you can do this.

When we view failure as feedback, it can literally help us fail our way to success.

You might also like this post: Are Human Beings Good or Evil by Nature?

And you can also take a $5 mini-course about your intrinsic worth, and four ideas related to it, here: Four Basic Truths

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