What does Failure mean to you?
I love this new approach to failure acronym from Trish Blackwell and the College of Confidence. It is so empowering and helps you look at failure in a completely different way! So often when we fail at something, we decide we just aren’t good at it or it won’t work. We stop before we’ve even gotten started. Did you know that failure and quitting are similar and yet totally different things? Failure is just a stepping stone to getting to where you want to be, unless you do quit, and then you truly have failed.
Breaking down the Fear of Failure Acronym.
F – Find opportunities: Look for opportunities in failure to learn and grow, and to find new and better paths to success.
You have a choice for what failure means to you. If you look at it as a learning process then you have just discovered a very valuable asset. Like Edison, it is just one of the hundreds of ways something didn’t work for you. Now you can try a new way to do it, and see if that works for you. If not, you can add it to the pile of things that did not. This is how scientists and inventors have created the incredible things we use everyday, like light bulbs, cars, and cell phones. Imagine where we would be if Edison stopped working on the light bulb after the first few explosions of the filaments?
A – Avoid self-judgment: Avoid judging yourself too harshly for your mistakes and failures, and instead focus on what you can do differently next time.
Judging yourself for your mistakes is in itself a huge mistake! Firstly it doesn’t help you improve, it actually makes things worse. Once you start down that path, you will inevitably find more negative things to dwell on. At this point, you need to disconnect from the situation and look at it as if you were a friend. If a friend had made this mistake you wouldn’t get down on them; you would tell them to try again.
That is exactly what you need to do for yourself. Admit that it didn’t work, then start thinking about other ways you could go about it. Before you know it, you’ll have a whole list of new things to try. This will bring a new excitement to your task, as you go on the adventure of finding out what does work!
I – Identify strengths: Identify your strengths. Identify your strengths and focus on what you can do well, while also acknowledging areas for improvement.
Knowing your strengths is extremely important no matter what you are doing. Make a list of your strengths and the areas that may need some improvement. If you are having trouble with your strengths, ask a few friends to help you out. Seeing that list of strengths in front of you will empower you to attack your task with renewed energy!
When it comes to your areas of improvement, do it objectively not in a hyper critical way. Look at the list and identify which ones you can take a course on, and which ones are completely out of your league. Then you can seek help for the ones that are out of your league and outsource that work. For the ones you can just google or take a course on; go for it! As the old adage says, practice makes perfect, so just keep doing it and soon it will become second nature.
L – Let go of fear: Release the fear of failure and see it as an opportunity to learn and improve and focus on what you can do well, while also acknowledging areas for improvement.
Releasing the fear of failure is paramount to opening yourself up to the success you want. Failure is absolutely essential for us to learn anything and become who we were meant to be. When a baby starts to walk, they have to crawl, then stand. They don’t start walking the first time they try. They have to keep trying until those shaky steps become firm and steady. It’s the same for anything we try to do. Just like that baby, we can’t give up or we’ll be going nowhere.
It’s important to remember that there is a way out of every situation. Everything has a solution and is fixable if you are willing to try. So focus on what you can do to change the situation and do that. If it doesn’t work, try something else. Every mistake you make is one less mistake you’ll make in the future, because you’ve already done it! Asking yourself what you can learn from each mistake is essential to turning it into a catalyst for growth.
U – Use setbacks as stepping stones: Use setbacks as stepping stones to build resilience and increase your capacity for success. Recognize that failure can be a valuable teacher and can lead to growth and success.
Once you see failure as a stepping stone, you won’t stumble over taking that first step. It’s human nature to worry about failing, but we don’t have to let it stop us in our tracks. The next thing to do is go back to your list of strengths and areas for improvement. Once you look at that list you can refocus on what the next step should be.
After you’ve mastered that step, you can take the next, and before you know it you’ve reached your goal. Who knows where that new path you’ve forged will take you! You’ll never know if you don’t take that first great leap of faith.
R – Reframe the narrative: Reframe your narrative around failure, seeing it as an opportunity to learn and grow, rather than a negative experience. Change your perspective on failure and see it as a natural part of the learning process.
If you’ve never heard the term reframe before, it means changing something negative into something positive. To begin with, we get to choose how we see things, and there is always more then one way to look at something. When you can see the positive side of things, no matter how minuscule, it will help you shift your perspective completely.
For example:
Negative thought: “That presentation was a disaster!”
Reframe/postive thought: “That presentation didn’t go as planned, but now I know what to improve for next time!”
In the positive reframe the key phrase is “next time”, you haven’t given up and are willing to try again. Therefore no matter how the presentation went, it wasn’t a failure because you didn’t quit! The great thing about reframes is that you can use them for any situation. Soon our little mistakes are just that, little mistakes, not monumental failures.
E – Embrace discomfort: Embrace discomfort and uncertainty, as these are often necessary components of growth and transformation
Discomfort and uncertainty are never, well…comfortable. That’s why they call it being out of our comfort zone. The only problem with this is that unless we get out of our comfort zone we will never grow and flourish. In addition, if we don’t grow and flourish, we won’t become the people God meant us to be. Eventually we all need to embrace that thing that makes us nervous and just do it!
The benefits of embracing the Failure Acronym
It never ceases to amaze me how incredible I feel after I’ve done something I didn’t think I could do. Consequently, I start looking around to see what else I can do. The incredible growth in my confidence that has happened over the past year, has all been due to facing my fears and doing it anyway! As I chipped away at the things I didn’t think I could do, I have discovered someone new.
In conclusion, I hope you give this new spin on failure a try! The failure acronym has been instrumental in breaking down the fear of failure that has haunted me all my life. Now that the failure barrier has been broken down, I look to the future with a totally new perspective. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!
For more information on my confidence journey click here.
To work with me one-on-one to improve your confidence or reduce your physical pain from chronic disease, contact me at: https://nopainallgain.ca/contacts/
