Have you ever experienced a failure so deep that you felt as though your life was over?  You messed up so bad that just want to go hide?  Forever? I sure have.

I once sent a highly confidential email intended for one recipient to an entire group of people.  Instead of sending this sensitive email to the one person, 25 people got it in their inbox.  I clearly recall that sinking feeling when I realized just seconds after hitting send what had happened.  Accidently, I violated policies about confidentiality.  I really blew it and I figured my career was over.  All I could do at that point was pick up the pieces and make right whatever I could.  I asked for forgiveness of the recipient, who graciously forgave me.   And then I also acknowledged my mistake before the group of 25 who received the email.  It all was deeply grievous to me, and infinitely humbling.

When my kids were younger, they had a word for this:

Epic Fail.

It happens to all of us.

• Maybe the business you always dreamed of having couldn’t stay solvent and one day you closed the door for the last time.
• A marriage hits the rocks and crumbles apart.
• The cause you gave heart and soul to ends up being the source of your deepest betrayal and pain.
• You lost the career you worked so hard to get.
• The college degree you hoped to obtain goes down the drain when you fail too many classes

The natural tendency with failure is to quit.  Done.  We won’t love again, we won’t try again and we won’t open our heart again, we won’t put our neck out there again.  The pain, rejection, and shame are immobilizing.  So what do we do?  We batten down the hatches, go in retreat mode and allow ourselves to become the victim of the failure.

And that is where the true failure lies.

Success Begins With Failure

When asked what his secret to success has been, Micheal Jordan states,

I’ve missed more than 9,000 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 in my life.  And that is why I succeed.

Or stated another way,

There’s no failure here, sweetheart.  Only when you quit. (Miracle Drug, U2)

Once we learn that failure is all part of our eventual success, then we’re on our way.  But seeing failure in that way means we have to reframe it, or see it differently.

So How Do We Reframe Failure?

1. Don’t quit.  We step on the path to making the most of our failures when we get back up and are willing to try again.  And then what?  Rinse and Repeat.  Most of us don’t fail just once.  But as long we take the posture of trying to make right whatever we need to and learn from the failure, the opportunities for growth abound.

My parents taught me the axiom,

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.

This well-worn cliché still rings true. It’s in the trying and however many times it requires us to try again that we gain indispensable learning and insights.

2.  Own It.  Too many people miss the unique opportunities found in failure by looking for the external reasons for the failure and not just saying I messed up. Blaming and not taking personal responsibility are shortcuts that make us feel better, but will not transform us into better people.

Along with owning it, sometimes you just have to make it right too.  Ask forgiveness and make amends as needed, as humbling as that is.  Unless we own the failure as our own, we will never be able to grow from it.  And by the way, owning the failure does not mean it defines you or makes you a failure as a person.

3. Learn Whatever You Can.  The insights gained from failure are gold, treasures that often aren’t learned in any other kind of way. Learning from the failure means asking questions like these:

• What could I or should I have done differently?  This one is huge.  Stay there until you have plunged the depths of the learning.
• What does this situation tell me about myself?  Where do I need to grow and work on me?
• What skills can I work on to help me not repeat this situation?

These insights are perhaps the ticket to the success you longed for and couldn’t seem to get a hold of before.  Failure teaches lessons that finally enable the fulfillment of our dreams and passions, or to become the person we want to be, to accomplish the goal, whatever it might be.

Redemption

When you reframe the broken, messed up stuff of your life and allow it to transform you and change you and used for something good-  that’s redeeming the failure.

Reframing allows you to say,  “I’m not a failure. I’m learning and growing through this.” Even when you seem to keep making the same mistakes, its in the multiple attempts that you one day find yourself in new territory, new discoveries about yourself and others that eventually lead to the breakthrough that bring the intended results.

Failure is a gift if you allow it to teach you.  Hard to comprehend, but true.  And it sure doesn’t feel like it when you find yourself in the midst of a failure.  I know because I’ve been there.  But I’ve also experienced the joy of growing past the failure, allowing it to transform my being.  That’s good news too. You don’t have to stay stuck in the shame or wounded pride.

In summary, reframing failure means saying to ourselves, I am not a failure. But I am owning it, learning, growing through it and allowing the failure to transform me into a better person more positioned for future success.

The reason this matters is that when we learn from our mistakes and failures, we are better prepared to more fully step into all that we are meant to do and to be.

By the way, if you were wondering, I didn’t lose my career and my life wasn’t over after the email incident.  I did learn some things in the process, ate a whole bunch of humble pie and moved on.  I still send emails.

What about you?  Can you think of a time when you experienced a failure so great that you wanted to give up and quit?  How did you overcome those feelings?  What did you learn about yourself?  How has the learning served you well going forward?

 

Photo Credit: Igor Ovsyannyov on Unsplash