Business Opinions: Manage your failure!

 When the going gets tough, the tough get going

No matter what subject I had in mind for this Thursday, after last night’s World Cup game everything changed and I knew I had to write about managing your failures. We witnessed last night in the game between Brazil and Germany an epic failure by one of the world’s best football teams. We saw one of the favorites destroyed and with no answer to what was happening on the field. I remembered last night watching that game something Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face!” It happens to the best out there so accept the fact it will happen to you at some point.

Growing up I heard a lot of times from my parents, teachers and especially my basketball coach “failure is not an option”. These words can have a very negative effect on a person because if you start believing this, the first time you fail your world will shatter and fall. And you need to fail as much as you need to get sick with measles as a kid to develop antibodies for it.

             You have failed? So what? Failure is always an option, it is not a tragedy and you can transform the experience into the drive for your new project or into a lesson that can help you succeed next time. You think that after what happen last night Brazil’s team will stop playing football and not participate at the next World Cup? Failure is natural, no one is perfect but if you fail enough and learn from your mistakes you might get pretty close. But the most important thing of all is to manage your failures so that you can use them as bricks in building the future and not as reasons to give up and get angry.

            Managing your failures the right way represents half of your future success. And the first step in managing your failures is to always start a new project expecting at some point to fail. The chance of that happening is there so you might as well incorporate the idea in your mental plan. We have to stay realistic at any given time so if you believe everything will go exactly as planned with no surprises is just like betting on the weather forecast for next month. Believe in your idea and start your project even in the presence of the risk of failure and you can use that to your advantage, fear of failure can make you become better because you pay more attention to details.

            At some moment, as we agreed, failure becomes more than just an option but a reality and how you respond in that moment is crucial for you and your partners. You have to remember, first of all, to stay calm. Throwing blame and raising your voice is never a good solution. So just take a moment to relax and analyze what happen before taking any decision. Most of the time, reacting impulsively is going to make everything worse. After calming down try and get feedback and find out what went wrong, not only from your point of view but also from your partners. Listening to other opinions can always give you a clearer picture of the situation you have in front of you.

            And most important of all, after going through every step of the process and finding what went wrong find also a lesson to learn from that and make sure it was an one-time mistake. They say there is a difference between school and real life. In school you get the lesson and a test at the end, in life and especially in business you get thrown into the challenge and you get the lesson at the end. Every opportunity we have, every challenge and every hardship should be a chance to improve. Identify that lesson and try again. Persistence is a major factor in achieving success. One of the reasons people fail is the fact that they give up too soon. Edison had his light bulb patent after 10.000 experiments. If he had stop after 8.425 we would be still using petrol lamps perhaps. And his attitude toward it was admirable. “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Yes sometimes it looks like that goal is running away from you, or success is hiding but you have to stay in the present because the fear of failure is actually a projection of the future. At this moment you are that person with a great idea, incredible motivation and passion. Focus on what you have to do now and embrace that fear; don’t let it cloud your mind.

There are also voices, such as Steve Pavlina – personal development specialist, that encourage you to fail on purpose as a stage of learning to manage failure. The idea is to go on doing things you know you are going to fail, as long as you don’t harm others and there are no long term negative consequences. You have no musical talent so you should learn how to play the guitar; you have two left legs – well try some dancing lessons and so on. The idea behind this experiment is that you can learn better to handle failure and know your limits.

Lately I find that I like a new inspirational quote – “I learned so much from my mistakes that I think I am going to do some more”. As long as you can see the positive aspect in your failures and they make you into a better version of yourself, you shouldn’t fear them. I am not saying that you should start inviting failure into your activity and your life. But you should change a little your perception about them and understand that it might rain exactly on the day you go to the beach but the sun will shine again and there is always another chance.