Table of Contents
Intro – The Core of Failure
I’m pretty sure everyone knows what failure is but for the sake of the post, I kinda have to do an introduction so let’s get into it.
As much as people want to deny it, failure is a core part of life. It’s bound to happen to you from time to time. That’s just how life is, there will be times when you will stumble and fall. And that’s ok. It happens to everyone, it’s what makes us human.
However, I’ve noticed that many people have the wrong mindset about failure. Many people see failure as the be-all and end-all of their decision making in regard to achieving their dreams. What do I mean by this? Well when deciding what to do in life, many people end up deciding not to do things they should because there’s a chance they might fail. And if they do choose to do it, the only thing on their mind will be failure. So much so that they will make themself believe that they have failed. The belief that if they fail, it’s over resonates in their mind so much that they neglect doing hard work.
I don’t want you to end up like this too.
So how can you avoid being like this? Well, that’s exacly what this guide is for. So let’s get into it.
Redefining Failure
For many, maybe even you, this is the main problem with failure: you have the wrong idea about failure.
What do I mean by this exactly? Well, there is a mindset I see a lot about failure that is incredibly self-destructive and limiting. That mindset is the belief that once you fail, everything is over. This mainly stems from a fear of failure. This fear will well up inside your head and turn failure into something that it’s not. It will also make that fear of failure have a lot of power over you and the decisions you make and it’ll lead you on a less satisfying path in life.
So how do you change this? You just do exactly what the title of this section says, redefine failure. Failure and bad days are bound to happen on your self improvement journey, you’re gonna get everything right straight away. So stop seeing failure as the end of your journey. It is far from it. This doesn’t mean that you should just brush off failure though.
Instead, you should use failure as a learning opportunity. Analyze your failings so you can see exactly what you did wrong, and learn from it. That way you’ll know to never make that mistake again. I know everyone is always obsessed with the ultimate ‘get rich quick’ secret or for someone to give them a step-by-step guide, but that is so limiting. Instead, you should embark on the journey by yourself, make mistakes, and learn from them. I’m not saying that you should deny all help offered, as help is obviously very useful and you should always listen to what people have to say. This is how great men (and women) are made.
If you want to redefine failure for yourself, it won’t be easy. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. Let’s look at some tips to see how you can change your mindset.
How To Embrace Failure – Mindset Tips
There are 2 ways to embrace failure. The wrong way and the right way. Let’s get the wrong way done with first.
The Wrong Way
This is something I’ve sadly seen in many people over the past couple of years. These people do indeed embrace their failings, however, they use those failings as an excuse for everything in life. These people understand that failure is inevitable, so they embrace their failings and use them as an excuse to never try again. I shouldn’t even explain why this mindset is so destructive. It goes against everything that I preach as well.
Don’t be like this.
The Right Way
The right way to embrace your shortcomings is to understand that failure is inevitable and you should try and gain everything you can from it. Failure is commonly associated with negative emotions, mainly despair, self-doubt, and sorrow. However, as I’ve said thus far, you should change your perception of failure to a more positive one. Let’s look at a few things you can do to help adopt a better mindset:
Develop a Critical Thinking Mindset
Critical thinking, as you probably know, is the objective analysis and evaluation of a situation in order to make a judgment. When it comes to your failings, critical thinking can help you analyze and understand exactly what went wrong. Understanding what went wrong will help you to not make that same mistake again and it will teach you more valuable lessons.
How exactly do you develop a critical thinking mindset? A great way to start is to try to understand basic things on a deeper level. For example, when you buy something from a store, try and picture to who and where all the money you just spent goes to. Another thing you can do is try and understand the inner workings of various machines that you use on the daily. You can also try anything similar to the stuff I just mentioned.
All this will help you think more critically which, in turn, will help you analyze and understand your failings better.
Become Resilient
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from setbacks and keep on going. Being resilient is a great quality to have in life as you’ll never give up on your goals no matter what. Plus, every successful person is also resilient. It’s basically required to achieve your dreams.
Want to become more resilient? Unfortunately for you, there’s no easy way to do it. The only way you can become more resilient is by overcoming hard times and trials. You’ll have to go through a lot but overall, it’s worth it.
With resilience, you’ll be able to overcome any trial standing in your way and you’ll be less affected by your failings. This will allow you to spend less time beating yourself up over them as they’ll phase you less. In turn, you’ll be able to spend more time learning from them.
Develop a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is the mindset that intelligence and abilities can be developed through hard work and effort. The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, and that mindset is extremely dangerous and destructive. A fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence and abilities cannot be learned and are determined by things such as talent. People who have this mindset tend to be incels and blackpillers, so basically anyone similar to the character Tohru Adachi (if you know, you know).
If you want to start developing a growth mindset, then you need to start changing your train of though regardless if you have a fixed mindset or not. You first need to understand that your abilities and intelligence are not determined by talent, they’re determined by how much time and effort you put into things. Every time you think a thought like “I’m not good enough,” you need to take note of that though and change that. You also need to understand that your failings aren’t a reflection of your worth or abilities. That will make it easier to learn from them.
A growth mindset is overall super beneficial to you. If adopted effectively, you’ll become an incredible person who won’t be stopped by any failures or setbacks.
Love the Process, Not Just the Goal
Many people get way too fixated on the goal the entire time they’re working towards it. This is a huge mistake. Focusing only on the goal will make you impatient and less tolerant of the long journey you have ahead. This will be reflected in your shortcomings as well as every time you fail, you’ll get incresingly more frustrated that you haven’t reached your goal yet.
Moral of the story, don’t just focus on the end goal. You’ve got to enjoy the actual journey itself too. If you’re constantly distracted by the end goal then you won’t be able to work as well as you would and it will wear down your mental health over time too. Remember, the journey towards your goal is arguably more satisfying than just your goal. You’ll grow so much as a person throughout it, so don’t just neglect it. You never know what wonder it’ll hold. It’ll be hard, but with persistence and an open mind, you will get trough it.
By loving and embracing the process, you’ll earn so much more than what you initially set out on your journey to obtain, so make sure to always embrace the journey and not just the goal you’re after.
Notice How Much You Have Grown
This one is kind of following up on the previous point. Part of embracing the journey instead of just the goal is noticing how much you have grown. For example, if you fail and decide to use that failure as a lesson, that could be a sign of growth. How you ask? Well I bet there was a time where you would’ve just given up after failing, but this time you didn’t. That there is a sign of growth.
By noticing how much you’ve grown, you’ll be filling your mind with more positive thoughts. You’ll be able to notice your personal growth and feel more satisfied with yourself. It’ll also stop your mind from being filled with negativity if you do slip up and make a mistake.
Taking note of your personal growth is a great way to further embrace the long journey you have ahead of you and feel more fulfilled with it. It’ll also help you bounce back from your failings easier as you’ll undertsand your worth better and you’ll know that it’s not the end.
I bet you’re already feeling a little more confident. However, I understand that failure can be a scary thing to face sometimes. So let’s see how you can tackle that fear.
Challenging The Fear of Failure
For many people, the main obstacle that stands in the way of a good mindset is the fear of failure. This fear is all too common these days and people just brush it off and don’t even try to tackle it. Instead, they try and avoid it outright by taking the easy path in life. At one point I too did exacly what I just described. It’s easy to fall into this trap in life. If you think you’re safe from this just remember, there are some things in life we think will never happen to us until they actually happen. So make sure to always be mindful of your mindset.
If you have fallen into this trap, fear not, as it’s never too late to climb out of it. All you have to do is challenge that fear of failure that is welling up inside you. It’s not easy to overcome a fear though, and this one is no exception. That’s why I’m here to give you a few tips to help you challenge and beat that fear:
Understand The Value In Life
For me, this tip is by far the most important one not just for this particular section, but for many other aspects of life. I’m pretty much gonna say this in as many posts as I can because that’s how important it is.
Understanding the value in life is to accept the fact your time in this world is limited, one day it will come to an end. Death is something we will all have to face eventually, some sadly sooner than others. This essentially means that we have only one shot in life. I wouldn’t wanna screw that one shot up. Because of this, I never want to settle for less and I only want to achieve greatness. I’ll do all the work required to achieve that greatness, no matter the cost. I’m grateful just to be here alive and I don’t want to waste that opportunity.
Think about it. If you’re overweight, stink of booze and cigarettes, and are generally unsatisfied with life, that’s your legacy. That’s what people are gonna know and remember you as, a fat loser. You’re wasting the gift of life that was given to you all because you’re lazy and ungrateful. You make no efforts to improve and your life consists of the same dull routine. Would you seriously want to spend the one shot at life you have like that?
What I just described is reality for many people who were too scared of failure to take action. The point is, life is short and you only have one shot at it. This means that you don’t have time to be held down by fear or anxiety. If you are held down by these feelings, then do everything in your power to overcome them. If you say “I already am doing that!” You’re not. There’s always more you can do. I understand how hard it seems but just remember, life is too short back down from things that seem ‘too hard’.
Recognize The Power Of Perspective
The way you view things has a huge impact on how they affect you. This goes for failure too. It’s like I said before, you play it up to be this big scary thing in your mind and that has a huge impact on you. All that happens because of your negative perspective about failure. I get it, it sucks. Failing at something sucks and it’s rooted deeply in our biology to avoid uncomfortable feelings. Our mind plays up these uncomfortable feelings as dangerous because of that biology. Our biology forms our perspective on this
However, no growth can be achieved by avoiding uncomfortable scenarios. Our comfort zone is played up by our minds to be the safest place we can be in. I do find that ironic though. In reality, it’s actually one of the most dangerous places you can be in. That’s because it leads to mindsets that go against growth and encourage complacency.
This is all due to the power of your perspective. You perceive your comfort zone to be the only place you should stay and view anything outside it as dangerous. You believe your goals to be unattainable and so you never try. You perceive failure as dangerous so you try and avoid it. However, you know deep down that you shouldn’t be doing this, something doesn’t feel right to you. You never bother to change your perspective to actually double down on that feeling of unease.
Failure is only scary because you see it as scary. Just picture this, what’s so bad about it? I know it sucks but seriously, what’s the worst that’s gonna happen if you fail? Is the world gonna end? Is your life gonna end? Are all your dreams crushed? No, none of that will happen. You only believe that because of your perspective on failure.
Your perspective on things holds a lot of power over you and you may not even realize it. So challenge it, to forge new and healthier perspectives.
Challenge Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs are thoughts we all have, they dictate our actions more than we are willing to admit. They are kind of similar to the last section about perspective, but there’s one key difference. Limiting beliefs are direct thoughts about something that is presented to us, like an opportunity. Whereas our perspective is a preconceived notion we have about certain things.
Limiting beliefs often manifest in our minds as thoughts like “I can’t do it” or “It’s too hard.” I believe that these limiting beliefs are rooted deeply in the fear of failure, here’s how.
As we know, limiting beliefs are thoughts we all get that try and steer us away from taking certain actions. They’re like an obstacle for us to overcome on the path to success. This is why half of the journey to success takes place inside our minds, while the other half takes place physically and is reflected in the work we do and the actions we take. Limiting beliefs will pop up in regards to taking these actions, and I find so many people just immediately giving into them, why is that?
I think I know why. The reason people give into these thoughts is because they provide an excuse. An excuse in case they fail. The main reason that people are scared of failure is that they’re forced to confront the truth that they’re not competent enough to achieve what they’re trying to achieve. So these limiting beliefs like “It’s too hard, it’s not meant to be” provide a comforting excuse as to why they have failed. However, that’s pretty ironic (damn what’s with all the irony today?), as saying that something is too hard is basically admitting your lack of competence.
Instead of giving into these beliefs, I want you to challenge them and turn them into more positive ones because you can do this and something being hard is not a reason to back down.
Shift Your Focus and Open Your Mind
I’ve said this many times already so far, but so many people get way too fixated on failure. They come up with so many ‘what if?’ scenarios in their head about every little thing that might go wrong. This happens due to a closed mindset, they get fixated on the wrong thing.
Fixating yourself on every little thing that may go wrong seems like a good thing at first until you properly think about it. You’ll start overanalyzing everything until your head explodes and this will only make your fear of failure worse since you’re focusing on it too much.
Instead of focusing so much on failure, you need to focus on growth. Seek out opportunities to grow, not somewhere to be safe. Seeking out these kinds of opportunities will naturally eliminate your fear of failure since you won’t be focusing as much on it. As well as thta, you should also open your mind. Opening your mind will help you tolerate failure better as you’ll be more open to searching for lessons to learn from your failings. So instead of thinking on the lines of “Man I failed, it’s over” think more like “Oh I slipped up, that’s ok, let’s see what I can learn from this mistake.”
You will grow so much from just shifting your focus from negativity to positivity.
While overcoming the fear of failure is great, remember that it’s not the only thing that will prevent you from failure. Sometimes, we may choose to throw in the towel for other reasons, like a lack of motivation. So let’s look at another important factor next.
The Importance of Persistence and Perseverance
Just overcoming the fear of failure is never enough, there will still be countless challenges for you to face on the road ahead. That’s where persistence comes in. Persistence, as I’m sure you know, as the act of never giving up, even when things get hard or hopeless.
On your journey of self improvement, there will be countless times when you will feel like this journey is fruitless and pointless. You’ll feel like throwing in the towel and giving up, so you can return to the life you lived before that probably involved playing too many video games and binging Netflix all day. Once again though, it all roots back to comfort. Doing the things you know you should do feels uncomfortable because of uncertainty around them and the lack of stimulation they offer compared to less productive, but more fun activities.
For this reason, it feels so easy to give up. However, you’ll never be satisfied with yourself if you let it end here and you know it. That’s why you’ll live in misery if you give up so easily. That’s what a lack of persistence does to you.
Now, let’s explore exactly why persistence is so important and how you can become more persistent.
The Mindset of Persistence
Adopting a mindset revolving around persistence is extremely important as it’ll strengthen your resolve to never give up, even in the face of failure. A persistence based mindset will help you keep going in any situation and will make you never give up on what matters most to you. Someone without a persistence-based mindset would just fold and give up the second they lose motivation or the moment things get too challenging. These people have no strong mental foundations to stand on and aren’t ready for the tough times ahead which is why they back out.
I know you don’t want to be like this.
How exactly can you avoid becoming this though? It’s simple. These people gave up because they hadn’t shifted their mindset to a persistence mindset and simply expected themselves to do better than they actually did. So basically, they hadn’t made the proper mental preparations to work towards their goals. That’s why they gave up so fast. If you want to make the right preparations, then you need to shift your mindset to a persistence one, here’s a few tips you can use to do just that:
- Understand That It Won’t Be Easy. The first thing you should do is recognize how hard the journey ahead will be. I’m all about positivity however I take a slightly different approach in this case. Rather than thinking about the journey positively, you should expect the worse so you’re ready for anything. And plus, enduring hard times will make you a stronger person, fit for overcoming failure.
- Recognize Your Excuses. This point is mainly talking about my most hated excuse. I’ve brought this excuse up countless times already, it’s just that terrible. That excuse is “It’s too hard.” I hate this excuse. Complaining about something being too hard is basically admiting taht you’re lazy. If everything was easy in life then nothing would feel rewarding of fulfilling. Overcoming challenges and hardships is what makes us grow and improve as people and saying that someting ‘is too hard’ is going against all that growth in favor of an easier, less fulfilling life. It goes against self improvement as a whole, that’s why I dislike it so much.
- Embrace Delayed Gratification. Delayed grafification is the ability to resist immediate rewards and pleasures in favor of obtaining long term gratification. An example of this would be chsoing to do some work instead of watching Netflix. You’re trading some instant satisfaction for some hard work and personal growth. Delayed gratification will naturally make you more persistent as it boosts self control and makes you more productive.
These 3 tips are the foundations of a strong mindset about persistence and if you expand and reinforce these ideas, your mind will be ready for the challenges to come. Now, let’s explore the other half of the mental puzzle.
Cultivating Patience
Another great quality that will help you succeed and overcome failure on the long road ahead is patience. These days, lots of people tend to value immediate results and instant gratification. This is one of the main downsides of the digital age we live in. Of course, this modern age isn’t all bad, since thanks to technology I’m able to chase my dreams and interact with so many awesome people. However, like I just mentioned, there are indeed negatives and they shouldn’t be ignored.
One of these negatives is how impatient many people have become. I believe that this stems from the short attention spans we all have these days thanks to social media and the influence dopamine has on us (more on that in section 1 of this other post). It’s thanks to our shortened attention spans that more and more people are giving up on their dreams because they can’t be bothered to do the work.
Obviously, you’re not gonna end up like this. To help you out and make sure you don’t, here are some tips to become more patient:
- Embrace the Journey and Not the Goal. I know, we already talked about this one earlier but I thought that now would be a good time to bring it up again. By focusing more on the journey and taking things one step at a time, you’ll naturally become more patient as you won’t be as desperate to reach your goal and you’ll be more focused on the task at hand.
- Practice Meditation. Meditation at first is pretty hard to get into, you’ll constantly be getting distracted and thinking about other things you can do and that’ll make you lose focus. However, if you take the time to master it, then it will help you become an incredibly patient person. It can also help you understand yourself better and come up with new ideas.
- Actually Listen to People. There’s a saying I really like (another? I know I know), it goes: “Talk like you know what you’re doing, listen like you don’t.” Pretty good right? Well I see a problem that this quote addresses pretty often. A lot of the time, many people don’t really listen to what others have to say. Instead, they’re just waiting for their turn to speak. Not only is that disrespectful to the people talking but you’re also missing out on knowledge or an opportunity to deepen your bond with someone. This will also make you more patient, so make sure to properly listen.
There are 3 tips you can use to help you get started with being more patient. The better you get at these skills, the more you’ll understand the value of being patient and the positive impact it has on you.
Now that the mental battle is out of the way, let’s move more to the physical side of things.
Stay Committed
What do you get when you combine persistence with patience? You get commitment. Commitment is the result of all that mental training about patience and perseverance and is the physical act of no giving up and doing the work that you know you should be doing. That work could be anything from writing to making a video, it depends what kind of goal you have in mind.
However, just because the mental battle is won, doesn’t mean that the physical battle is. You may not know what to do next or you may be out of ideas of stuff you can do. This happens to all of us and they are the main obstacles of the physical battle that we endure throughout our self improvement journey. Overcoming these challenges is crucial to overcoming failure itself which is why I have some tips to help you out:
- Use AI. The possibilities that come with AI are truly limitless and it can help out with all kinds of problems. If you run out of video ideas for example, AI can come up with giant lists full of video ideas for you to make. However, there is a slight catch. Don’t use AI to do your work for you. My mom is an English teacher and she says she can spot an AI-written essay from a mile away. The quality of your work will also suffer if you do this as AI is less creative than an actual human.
- Create a Plan. Let’s face it, if you just YOLO it and dive into your journey head first without a plan, you’re gonna get lost pretty fast. In order to make a good plan, it should be fairly flexible to account for unforeseen circumstances, it should have well-set goals so you have something to aim for, and it should be fairly detailed. This way, you know what you have to do next and are also accounting for unforseen circumstances.
- Hold Yourself Accountable. If you flake on doing your work, make sure that you hold yourself accountable accordingly. By holding yourself accountable, you’ll start to feel guilty when you’re skipping out on hard work in favor of some instant gratification. That feeling will have more and more of an impact on you until you’re eventually forced to take action out of guilt. It’s also a good way to punsih yourself to make sure you never make the same mistake again.
- Meditate. Remember how at the end of the last meditation section I mentioned how it was good for coming up with ideas? Well, that’s exactly what I’m talking about here. When you’re meditating, you may find many incredible ideas popping into your head. You’ll have to be extremely focused on meditation for this to hapen though. This can help you reach new realizations and push foward when you don’t know what to do next.
Now, if you’ve been following along with these tips, you should probably be on your mind to building up a mentality of steel that will help you overcome any trial. However, there’s one thig that I have mentioned a lot up until now but have never actually told you how to do it, and I think it’s about time.
Turning Failure Into Success
I’ve said how important it is to turn failure into success time and time again so far in this post. For me, that’s what overcoming failure is all about. So let’s look at exactly how it’s done.
The first thing you need to understand is that failure is inevitable. If you have read the post so far, you should already understand this. No matter what you do, you will stumble and fall along the way. If you have read the post up to this point, you should also understand that it’s part of the learning process. You don’t know everything, so it’s only natural you’ll make a mistake somewhere. You should also understand how important it is to respond to your failings in the right way, as that will define the lessons you learn from it, let’s first look at how to analyze your failings.
Analyze and Learn From Your Failings
As you know, I’ve told you over and over again to shift your mindset toward one that embraces and learns from failure. However, that isn’t exactly easy. Shifting your mindset never is. Luckily though, I’m here to help.
So, how can you learn to analyze your failings? Well, the first thing you need to do is pretty uncomfortable. You have to look back and reflect on your failings. I know that this can be tough, but you never now how many lessons are hiding within those failures. Make sure you take the time to properly remember them as well, not just gloss over them as that won’t do much for you.
After you’ve remembered, the next thing you need to do is remember what went wrong. Once you have identified the cause of failure, you have to identify every other factor that contributed to that failure. This way, you’ll be able to see exacly what went wrong. Make sure you dive into your thought process to identify what you were thinking to see if anything went wrong there.
The final step is obvious, extract any lessons you see from those failings. This way you can maximize the amount of lessons you learn from your failings. Not much else needs t be said about this one.
And that is how I do it.
Adjust Your Approach
Make a mistake once, you learn from it, make it twice, you’re an idiot. I think that’s how the saying goes and boy is it important in self improvement. If you keep making the same mistake over and over again, then you’re not exactly gonna get anywhere are you? That’s why it’s important to adjust your approach to your goals when things aren’t working out. let’s dive into why it’s so important to do this.
A lot of people make the same mistakes over and over again. They never change their approach to how they tackle things, why is this? Well, I believe it’s because of something I already mentioned earlier, the way we naturally seek comfort. A lot of the time, we are afraid to try new things because of the uncertainty they provide, so we stick to what we know and just do what we did before even though it’s the wrong way to do things. This will just lead to failure after failure.
I don’t want you to be like this though, so instead you should just do it regardless of whether it feels comfortable or not. As safe as it is, no growth ever comes from your comfort zone. You have to leave your comfort zone whether you like it or not.
How exactly should you adjust your approach though? What I would recommend doing is using the lessons you have learned from your past failings. Those lessons can often provide you with valuable insight as to how you can change the way you do things. Once you’ve identified how you want to change things, all that’s left is to act.
Stay Focused and Consistent
There’s one really important thing that you need to understand about success and for some reason, many people still don’t realize this. What you need to understand is that success is not a linear path and instead, it involves trial and error as well as many ups and downs.
For many, everything could be going smoothly until one day they’re hit with a bad day and then they immediately throw in the towel. You should never let a bad day ruin your whole journey though as these days are often the most important. If you’ve been paying attention, the answer to why bad days are the most important days should be obvious. By overcoming hardships, we grow as people. That’s why the bad days are so important. If you’re able to show up on a bad day and do everything you would do on a good day, then success will only be a matter of time.
This is exactly why staying focused and consistent is so important. Success doesn’t care about what’s happening around you or how you feel, it only cares about results. So make sure you show up and perform when you need to the most.
That is the key to greatness.
Final Thoughts
The key takeaways from this post should be obvious: Don’t fear failure and learn from failure. If you do these 2 things then you’re already on the right track.
Fearing failure is pointless as it’s inevitable, so that would be a waste of energy. Instead, prepare yourself to bounce back and learn from it, it’ll make you a better person overall. By embarcing failure and learning from it, you’re improving as a person. After all, that’s what you want right?
