Learning to FAIL…

The most important part of succeeding is…learning to fail.

Most of us don’t want to think about failure.

Most of us want to forget about our failures in life.

But I want you to think about failure - I want you to think about it and feel it in your body in the most intense detail.

I want you to learn HOW TO FAIL.

Close your eyes and think about a time you failed at something. Think about failing to achieve a goal you’re currently working towards.

How does it feel? What kind of emotions does it stir? What words and phrases do you hear in your head?

I bet it stirs negative emotions – feelings of failure, of disappointment, of frustration, of low self-esteem, self-worth, maybe even embarrassment.

I bet there’s negative, critical chat – I’m not good enough, I shouldn’t have bothered, what’s the point, I’ll stick to what I know I can do.

A seemingly natural reaction might be to give up and move on to something else, something more ‘achievable’, something you’ve done before and know you can do again.

This is not uncommon, and a seemingly natural human reaction we’ve been conditioned to act on from early in our lives.

But not always…!

Think about babies, when they learn to walk. If babies quit every time they failed they’d never learn to walk. In fact, the act of failing, of falling down and having to climb up again in itself brings the physical strength required to eventually succeed.

How we can learn so much from babies! Not to layer on the negative thoughts about failure and just get back up and go at it again. No shame, no embarrassment, no stories created in our heads about what this means for our self-worth or self-esteem.

Just get back up and try again!

However, in the more ‘developed’ adult brain there’s a lot more baggage to overcome to move us through failure.

We need to embrace failure and accept it for the opportunity it provides us to learn and to build resilience. If you’ve never failed then you’ve never lived and never achieved.

It’s all part of the journey.

My desire for you is to Dream Big, Fail Often and Never Quit…

…and learning to fail is only way to do this.

If you are trying to achieve something you’ve never done before, then you’ll have to do things you’ve never done before.

If you’re doing things you’ve never done before you WILL fail in some way at some point, and the bigger your dream and the challenge, the more likely this is.

But failure brings resilience, resilience brings persistence, and persistence brings success.

Nothing worth doing is easy. It takes resilience, persistence. You will fail many times but with resilience and persistence you will succeed.

Learn to fail…and prepare to fail. Failure is the route through to success!

And so how to do this? Get your mind ready and clean up your thinking!

Failure is NOT…I’m no good, I shouldn’t be doing this….

Failure is…the next step to succeeding, a learning opportunity, makes me stronger…

Get your thoughts right, have positive chat with yourself and you will embrace failure, you will keep going and keep going and keep going, and you will succeed. I guarantee it.

And as well as succeeding, you will inspire. You will inspire others to fail, to try again, to fail, to build resilience, to fail, to persist, to fail, to learn and learn again and succeed.

Now close your eyes, think about your dream, so vivid and clear. Think about the journey, the failures, the setbacks. But also feel the determination, the resilience, the persistence growing inside you.

Now visualise your success, the achievement of your dream. Feel it in your body, visualise it in your mind. How good does that feel?!

I’m not saying this is easy, the brain has been trained and conditioned over many years to avoid failure and resist the thought of failure.

But start on the journey now to change your approach to failure. Take time to think about failure and how it feels, and make connections in your mind to the opportunity and learning that failure brings. Practice this over and over again. Think it, feel it, do it. The conscious effort will become subconscious, and failure will become the foundation for your success.

It’s done…now go do it!

Life and Wellbeing Coaching with Ian Gray…Dream big and never ever give up!