Embracing Fear and Failing Forward

Failure is an imminent and necessary part of life, but there are ways to embrace it rather than allowing it to consume or paralyze you. Failing forward was an idea coined by John C. Maxwell in his book Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success, where he explains that knowing how to handle failure will lead you to ongoing success. It’s a great read and I highly suggest it! Failing forward is a concept that I have become comfortable with as a way to learn and grow. Because of that, I want to share ways to fail forward so you can too.

Steps to Fail Forward

How you deal with failure determines your trajectory from that point on. Do you want to move forward or backwards? Failure isn’t a destination, and neither is success. Instead, it’s a journey that when embraced, will launch you forward. 

There are 2 parts to embracing failure. First is understanding the inevitability of it, and second is knowing how to handle it when it happens. I want to explain the steps to dealing with failure before and after it occurs. 

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” — Denis Waitley

Before Failing

In order to embrace failure’s inevitability, you need to accept that it’s a reality for you and everyone around you. Everyone, and I mean everyone, experiences failure at some point in their life. Those who achieve great things are the ones who truly embrace it and figure out how to navigate their mistakes as stepping stones for ongoing success. Many of the world’s most successful people credit failing for their successes. Understanding this will make the next step easier.  

That next step is to eliminate the fear of failing. Fearing failure will only inhibit your dreams, your decision making, and will hold you back from making leaps and bounds without you even realizing it. 

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure” — Bill Gates

After Failing

So, you’ve failed at something. Big or small, just know that it is only temporary! Your world isn’t going to come crashing down on you or on anyone else. More often than not, other people won’t even notice that you’ve failed and won’t pay mind to it if they do.  

Failure will only follow you if you dwell on it. If you don’t brand yourself a failure, no one else will. Brand yourself a student instead of a victim. View every mistake as a learning opportunity and a chance to grow. On top of being a student, brand yourself as a strategist. Figure out what went wrong, why it went wrong, set realistic expectations and put together a strategy to prevent it from happening again. 

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” — Samuel Beckett

Fail Better

Once you learn from your mistakes and enact a plan for moving forward, it’s important to circle back to square one and realize that failure is always a possibility. Accept it, expect it, and learn how to handle failure better each time. 

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed” — Michael Jordan

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