If you’re human, you’ve felt the sting of failure and walked away thinking that’s all it was – an embarrassment and nothing else – no more to think about. This sting has likely kept you from being able to achieve your goals more than once.
You had a relationship that “wasn’t meant to be” or you had bad luck, and your business failed quickly. You tried to lose weight, but these programs that work for other people simply don’t work for you. You’re just doomed to fail, right?
What you’re not considering is why you’re not having success. What can you do differently next time to succeed?
You’re discarding your whole experience and labeling it as a failure without looking for the golden nuggets that exist in every unsuccessful attempt. Knowledge, experience, and a change in mindset.
These are all things that you can gain from your perceived failures.
The reality is – the resiliency built from failure is the secret sauce for success. It is possible to take your failures and learn from them. But it’s not for the faint of heart. Many would rather drown in self-pity or believe that the universe is out to get them.
If your actions aren’t in alignment with your goals, you will fall short every time.
But it’s difficult to see why or how you’re missing the mark. You’re too close to the situation. And the people you’ve surrounded yourself with either don’t understand your position or they have their own interests in mind.
I know your situation, and I see what you don’t. As a respected health coach – I help professionals take themselves and their future to the next level – the level where you’re flourishing in all aspects of your life. So let me tell you what I know to be true.
What Do I Know About Failure?
You see successful people and assume they know something you don’t. Well, I can assure you, I didn’t have a fairy godmother floating around and granting me wishes.
I’m a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach with an ICF Master Certified Coach Certification. Believe it or not, I took both of these exams twice. The first time I took the test for my national board certification, I was only off by two questions. I could’ve stopped right there and chalked it up to bad fortune; when I didn’t pass my ICF test, my first thought was the assessor could tell I was African American, and I failed due to bias.
But if any of that were true, I wouldn’t be where I am now. The greater truth was I needed to learn from my mistakes and work harder.
Helping my clients shift their mindset regarding failure – enabling them to accomplish their goals. And giving them the tools to ensure that all aspects of their lives are in alignment with their values.
You can benefit from my coaching if:
You’ve achieved success in one area, but you’ve felt the need to sacrifice other parts of your life in the process.
You feel like there’s a disconnect between your values and your actions.
You’re working hard to achieve your true goals, but you’re missing the mark.
I can help you shift your beliefs about failure to help you achieve the goals that elude you.
Whether you’re a professional athlete, an entrepreneur, or an individual with hopes and dreams like the rest of us – I can help you determine how failure fits into your life and contributes to your overall success. If you’re lucky enough to have natural talent, it will only take you so far.
I know firsthand what it’s like to taste failure but not lose your appetite for success. I also know that your relationship with failure and success impacts every other area of your life. Especially your relationships with others.
I assist you with overcoming failure, handling success, and developing a healthy mindset that will serve you well in all areas of your life.
First, to learn from failure, you have to overcome your fear.
How to Overcome the Fear of Failure to Achieve Your Goals
Maybe you think you cope well with failure. But doesn’t coping with failure involve doing the bare minimum? If coping with failure means not falling apart, you won’t learn anything by simply coping.
It’s better to overcome failure than to cope with failure – as overcoming means you gain power over it. You learn what you need to do to succeed the next time.
It’s not easy to change your mindset towards failure; if that were the case, everyone would do it. But it is what’s required to move forward – before you are faced with adversity – and after you have experienced it.
The shame and guilt you experience from failing yourself, or someone else can be debilitating. But only if you let it defeat you. The most important thing to remember is you can learn as much – or more – from your failed experiments as you can from those that are successful.
When you think of failure as another way to learn and grow – instead of a crushing blow that means you’re worthless – doors that didn’t exist before will start to open for you.
If you can recognize that failure is temporary, you’ll start to see that most things are not actually failures. If you persevere, the results you perceive as failures are often delayed successes.
What Do you Gain When You Learn How to Handle Success and Failure?
When you’re an athlete, do you play the same exact way against opponents with different strengths? This would be the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over – expecting a different result.
When you play against someone who is stronger than you, you don’t try to outdo them with your strength. That’s a losing battle. But maybe you leverage your speed or focus more on defense.
Every time you fail, it is an opportunity to learn. Your skill set and knowledge build with each unsuccessful attempt – allowing you to take a more comprehensive approach toward success.
So how does having a positive relationship with failure also inform you on how to handle success?
For starters, it teaches you humility. I’m not saying you’re self-absorbed if you’ve only had a few failures followed by massive success. But experiencing some failure does help you recognize the value of success.
It can be easy to sweep valuable experiences under the rug – when they feel like a massive disappointment in the short run.
But if you choose to only see failure at face value – and not as an opportunity that gets you one step closer to your goal – then it will truly be just a failure.
I help my clients see the big picture in order to achieve their goals. Everything in your life is related. From your mindset to your physical health and your career to your relationships. So if one of these things is out of alignment, then your life is too. Make sure your values align with your goals and your goals align with the life you want. Take a step in the right direction and book a call with me here.
As an expert on human behavior and building fulfilling relationships and a Master Credentialed expert on personality type, Dr. D. Ivan Young is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and media personality. Dr. Young is an ICF Credentialed Master
Certified Coach (the gold standard in coaching), Certified Professional Diversity Coach, a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and a Credentialed Master MBTI Practitioner. Dr. Young is also a member of the prestigious Forbes Coaches Council.
“Only when you stop embracing old attitudes and self-serving ideologies can things change for the better.” Dr. D Ivan Young MCC, NBC-HWC, CPDC