Learn from the Negatives!

Step Five How to Deal with Failure

So, in a recap here are the first four steps for dealing with failure...
 1) Stay Calm.
2) Look for the Learning.
3) Shift into the New Model of Failure.
4) Forget About Other People.

It may sound cliche but the final step, #5 is: Try Again.

Thomas Edison was ruthless in his experimentation famously saying,  “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

The only way to parlay failures into future successes is to follow the first four steps and then to try again!

Step Four for How to Deal With Failure

So far I've covered the first two steps to dealing with failure... And they are: 1) Stay Calm. 2) Look for the Learning. 3) Shift into the New Model of Failure... Step Four is to Forget About Other People.

Imagine if you were the last person on the planet... you know the scenario right? You wake up and literally it's just you or you and your significant other or spouse and everyone else is dead or simply gone. When Richard and I have discussed this scenario (on the off chance that it should happen we like to know we've at least and one conversation about it) we decide that we'd pretty much run amok and do whatever we want.  We were a little sad that there would no one at our favorite restaurants to cook our food.

Now if this happened since no one else is around, their opinions of you and your success or failure really don't matter too much anymore do they? That's the mental place you must get to right now.

A couple years ago I blogged about my favorite rule.  It's from a book called 'Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination' by Helen Fielding; the same writer who did the Bridget Jones series.

Olivia is a great character and I fell in love with a list she calls upon throughout the book called, "Rules for Living." These rules span all facets of a woman's life including the very important Rule #3: Never change a hair cut or color before an important event. (I can personally attest to this rule having broken it myself.) Anywhoo...

Then there is Rule #2. My favorite. It's the one I knew deep down but was reminded of it and I have gone back to this rule over and over and over in my life. Here it is: No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.

When it comes to dealing with failure, you must forget about other people. When you do, your suffering, embarrassment, fear will almost disappear entirely allowing you to quickly move to step #5!

Third Step of How to Deal with Failure

So far I've covered the first two steps to dealing with failure... And they are: 1) Stay Calm. 2) Look for the Learning.  Step three is: Shift into the New Model of Failure.

Most people operate with the following mental model: they see themselves in the middle, with success on one end and failure on the other. They do everything they can to move toward success and away from failure.

What if, rather than seeing failure as something to be avoided it became a “stepping-stone” on the path to success? In other words: Success is the destination. Failure is how you get there.  To achieve significant success in today’s world, failure is not just a possibility…it is a requirement.

The old model is where you avoid failure at all costs; the newer model is to understand and value failure for what it is. In sales, the old model is to avoid no, the new model is to 'go for no.' When we live in a Go for Yes world where failures are bad and success is good, no wonder that we put ourselves through such trauma when a failure happens but with the new model that becomes totally unnecessary!

Second Step for How to Deal with Failure

They first step for How to Deal with Failure was to Keep Calm.

This brings us to the next step which is to: Look for the Learning.

What worked and what didn't? If you got a 'no' do you know why? If your project completely tanked, what would you do differently?  In order to turn your 'failure' into success, you've got to find the learning within the failure. And if you are simply 'going for no' then the learning may just be very simple: try again!
 

First Step of How to Deal With Failure

I was recently presented with a 'tweet that read: "Anyone reading or who has read Go for No! will know that failure is an important part of success. The question is how to deal with it..."

Great question. Here is Step One: Stay Calm.

If you are like most people, you've been taught and trained to live in a world where failure is abhorred. It is unfortunate that as adults, the 'ego' is wrapped up into how we are perceived by others and so failure is not appreciated nor sought.  Oh sure, we'll quote J.K. Rowling and Richard Branson - both who espouse the value of failure but we seem to allow their wise words wash off our back like a duck in water. (Perhaps deep inside we think, 'yeah but they are billionaires!' Has it ever ocurred to us that embracing failure is actually a reason for their success?)

The children of today are not fairing any better. It seems once encouraged to persist through learning to walk and tying a shoe, that they too are set upon with a philosophy of success via perfection. 'Positive Failure' author Alastair_Arnott argues that "avoiding failure is responsible for the huge lack in resilience we have seen in many adolescents in western society."

So how to start dealing with failure? First: Stay calm.  And come back for Step Two.

Go For No Book "Should You Read Go For No?"