We can view failure as a negative, and only a negative, in our lives. But what if we learnt to reframe our thinking just a bit and could see failure in a more positive light? What would that do to our thinking, our decisions, and our ability to grow and learn?

It certainly would change the way we think about ourselves, our lives and our futures. We need to remember that our failures shape us. Just as much as our successes do. We gain our confidence and resilience from how we end up handling both. We learn from the entire process and the progress we make overall comes from both failure and success rather than from just our successes.

How Can We Embrace Failure In A More Positive Way?

Learn, Use And See Failure As An Education Tool.

For most of us we learnt that when we fail at something we became a failure as a result. But that is simply not true. When we can reframe how we think about any failure we can move beyond this negative thought and that is all it is, a thought, not a fact.

When we become willing to use any type of failure as something to learn from then we can move on more quickly. We can cut the self-recrimination, procrastination, hesitations, and fears. None of which serve us well or build our self-confidence or resilience.

Think more in terms of trying, failing, learning, trying again, succeeding or failing again, learning some more, and repeating as often as needed.

What Questions Can We Ask To Help You Use Failure As A Learning Tool?

Remember not everything about the experience will have failed in what we did. We tend to ignore the positives when we perceive something as a failure. So embrace what went well as what went wrong. Stop the blame game and over-personalizing. Factors outside our control can contribute to what happened. We don’t seem to take these into account and we need to.

Reflect on what went well and what did not. This will be a useful strategy to use in reviewing how your week, month or project went. Be honest with yourself. Skip a question and tackle the others ones first if you need to, but do come back to answer all the questions (especially about what went well)

1. What went well?
2. What did not go well?
3. Acknowledge the external factors that contributed?
4. What did you learned? Ask for advice from your support system or mentor (only if these are positive people) if you need to.
5. Make a plan for how you will improve or do things differently next time. Create an action list of small actionable steps you can take from now on.
6. Celebrate what you have learnt, no matter how small.

6 More Strategies We Can Use To Reframe Our Thinking On Failure.

Embrace Imperfection

When our behaviours and thinking with perfectionism become self-defeating and negative it can cause a whole host of problems for us. These can include stress, exhaustion, anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. If you feel any of these have become problem for you then please reach out to a therapist, who can help you manage your fears and self-criticism.

The antidote to perfectionism is self-forgiveness and self-acceptance. If you don’t work through your feelings and the root cause of your perfectionism you can become trapped by shame, guilt, anger and other emotions. Moving in to self-forgiveness and self-acceptance frees you and allows you to be better able to sit with uncomfortable feelings in the future including those to do with failure.

Learn to let go of your perfectionist streak and do things “good enough” instead. We open ourselves to building more learning opportunities. We become more effective and focused on what we need to do when we embrace imperfection.

Don’t Allow Over Thinking To Take Over.

Most people over think every now and then. This can be particularly so when combined with the stresses of normal day living and working, such as making a presentation in work, going for an interview, or taking an exam, etc.

It can become a huge issue when we fail at something and we end up running some very negative commentaries in our minds. These pull apart our decisions and actions. They will also keep us caught up in criticizing, attempting to make predictions, second guessing ourselves, reading into the smallest details, etc. All of this is a negative cycle, and there is no way we get an opportunity to see even the smallest possibility of positive in what occurred. How can we learn when we are like this?

One thing is for sure over thinking is exhausting, debilitating and can hold us captive or paralyzed.  We fail to move forward in our lives because of this paralyzes. Plus we end up constantly feeling fearful of every decision. We get caught up in the “should” “could” and “what ifs” and nit-picking.

The rumination and worry will only add to our stresses and the worry may keep us up at night.  When over thinking becomes a habit for us it is mentally destructive and draining. It is far more constructive to learn to use your over thinking to focus your thoughts into action instead. Get your brain trained so that your inner sage gets louder than the critic and let it focus your thoughts towards solutions and positive actions.

Tune In To Your Inner Sage (voice).

In order to tune into your inner sage you need to teach your mind to be still. Meditation will help you with this and I have many podcasts that explain how to do a variety of meditations, you can start here and check out the others on my podcast.

Another thing we need to relearn here is to build trust in ourselves again. So that as we learn to listen to our inner sage we can trust what it is telling us. This can be hard; it is something that requires patience, practice and time. I’ve outlined a number of steps that you can use to help you regain that trust in your gut instinct here.

Becoming better friends with our inner sage will help us to reframe what has happened. We can do a better review (see questions above) and learn from our mistakes in order to move on. It will teach us to take positive actions that are more in line with our dreams and goals also.

Communicate Clearly And Learn To Say No More Effectively.

We don’t tend to speak up for ourselves enough, we as women don’t shout, or even speak up, about our achievements. Women can be hesitant in putting ourselves forward even though they know they can do the job, better at times.

Two ways we can begin to do this is to learn to communicate more clearly and to learn to say no more effectively. Of course communication can incorporate more than just our words.

Learning how to deal with negative people, changing our thought patterns, understanding our emotions,(this is only one of a number of emotions I discuss in detail on my website) and so much more, are all combined to help us communicate effectively. I’ve outlined several tips on how to communicate more effectively here, including how to communicate when you’re angry.

Learning to say no can be a difficult one for many women, particularly if you are so use to being the “good girl”, the doormat, or co-dependent. But you can do it! It’s a new habit you can learn to exercise, remember it will take time, patience and practice. You will have relapses as you learn to do this. But remember you can change your mind and phone someone later to say you can’t do something you previously said yes to. Be compassionate with yourself here and self-forgiving, none of us are perfect at this skill but with practice we do get better. I’ve outlined a number of steps you can use to develop this habit in this blog and video.

Build Your Support System.

We need to build four types of support to our support system. These include positive family and friends but also mentors and supporters that can provide us with information, advice, practical help and encouragement.

Having this type of support system will enable us to reduce our stress, fears and anxieties. It also helps us to be more resilient and to feel more self-confident in the decisions and actions we take. We can deal more effectively with any failure and with negative people’s criticisms as we have a greater sense of belonging to such a supportive group. This is reassuring in that we are confident that our supporters will have our back when we need them to.

Build Your Self-Forgiveness And Self-Compassion.

When we mention the term forgiveness it can bring up so many emotions for people. We often confuse forgiveness with having to reconcile with the other person. This is further from the truth. The type of forgiveness I’m talking about here is all about you and you alone. Taking the time to work through any issues from the past allows us to free ourselves.

We can let go more readily of that inner critic that has held us captive and also build in more self-compassion. Both of these can change our perspective about our life to one of a more positive nature. I’m not saying that our life will be all sunshine and roses. But when we are faced with the ups and downs of life we are more proactive in how we handle them. I outline a number of steps we can take on self-forgiveness here, and some of self-compassion here, if you are interested in building up these skills.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.