How To Turn Failure Into Success
By: Michael Mints
Tags: Failure, Mindset, Goals, Success, Motivation

How To Turn Failure Into Success

Photo by the Rodin Museum on Pixabay

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt

A fearless mindset is the best defense against the fear of failure. Having the right perspective, a dose of motivation, and plenty of optimism will carry you over the ﬁnish line to achieving your goals and success in life.

You might be fearful now, but that doesn’t have to be the way you face life now and or in the future. You can greatly reduce your fear of failure.

See how a fearless mindset is a missing component to your success:

Optimism is paramount. If you expect the worst, you won’t even try. With a positive attitude, you are better prepared to propel yourself forward with your success in life plans.

An optimistic, positive attitude allows you to handle your failure, take it in stride, even welcome it as a friend as it keeps moving you forward towards your success.

○ Practice being optimistic all day, every day. Expect that the weather will be good today if the weather is bad because you expect the weather to clear. Have high expectations for everything you do, from looking for a parking space to asking someone out for a date.

○ Optimistic people are more successful. Interestingly, studies show that pessimistic people tend to be more accurate, but optimistic people are far more happy and successful in life. So, would you rather be accurate or happy?

Be a consumer of motivational material. Expose yourself to ALL things motivational. This is some of the greatest advice I’ve ever received.

○ Books: Read things that get your juices ﬂowing. It can be quotes, books, biographies, or articles related to successful people. Think about and learn from your heroes; learn more about them, how they think. Fiction, non-ﬁction, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re being inspired and motivated.

○ Listen to motivational materials: songs, speeches, books on tape, or seminars. Listen to something every day that inspires you to be better, to be your best.

○ Motivational movies and videos. Maybe Rocky puts you in the mood to take on the world. Think of the movies that motivate you to take on the world and watch a couple each week. Check out YouTube for motivational videos; this is my personal favorite.

○ Take advantage of all these. By reading, listening, and watching things that motivate you, you’re attacking your brain and mindset from every possible angle.

Decide to become great at dealing with discomfort. The negative feelings that you experience when you think about failure are just a momentary uncomfortable tingle.

You don’t have to allow it to change your behavior. Practice and learn to keep moving forward despite your fear and negative feelings. Push past the need to stop or give in. Keep going; you’ll be glad you did.

Change your mindset and watch YOU and your life evolve. When you change your thinking and the way you look at failure, you change your behavior and the way you evaluate risk.

Spend a little time each day, motivating yourself, and become comfortable with discomfort. You’ll quickly begin to feel like you can handle anything the world throws at you. You’ll soon understand that failure is happening FOR you, not to you.

Learning From Famous Failures

“Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.” — Wilma Rudolph

Many of your favorite actors, writers, singers, athletes, and historical heroes have dealt with a stunning amount of failure. We can derive inspiration from these people and their stories and potentially duplicate their success.

You can be just as successful as anyone else. In fact, you can be as successful as you decide to be. The key is a surviving failure. Many famous and highly successful people suffered a long string of failures before experiencing success.

Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of our greatest US presidents, but he wasn’t always successful. In fact, it’s safe to say that he had more failures than most of us might be willing to endure:

He went into the Illinois militia as a captain and left as a private.

He was defeated when he ran for the state legislature.

He failed in business, His girlfriend died, and He had a nervous breakdown.

He was defeated for Speaker of the Illinois State Senate; He was defeated while running for Congress.

He was defeated for the US senate, He was defeated for the vice-president nomination, and He lost for the US senate again.

J.K Rowling. As the author of the beloved Harry Potter books and a net worth of nearly $1 billion, Rowling had her fair share of failure, frustrations, and rejections before finally ﬁnding success.

After falling in and out of love, she ended up with a failed marriage and a baby daughter, she now had to raise alone.

Because she was a single mother, on welfare she had to write the book on a manual typewriter even though word processors were available at the time, and electric typewriters had been around for many years.

She had to deal with her mother's devastating death and sank into a deep, grieving depression, getting little accomplished during this time.

A dozen publishers rejected her book before she found one years later who believed in her and was willing to take a risk and publish her book.

Sylvester Stallone. While he’s managed to become a household name, earn millions of dollars, and win an Oscar, Sylvester Stallone faced many serious challenges on his journey to becoming one of the most successful actors in Hollywood.

He was turned down by over 1,500 talent agents in New York City, even though there weren’t1,500 talent agents in NYC. After he approached every agent in the city, he started back at the beginning of the list and tried again.

He was repeatedly told that he looked and sounded funny and didn’t have a chance to make it as an actor.

He had many problems in school throughout his childhood and attended a special school for kids with learning disabilities.

He got his ﬁrst job by spending the night in an agent ofﬁce. He had been rejected at 4 pm and refused to leave, so he was still there the next morning and was given his ﬁrst job.

How much have you failed? You can bet that the most successful people you know have failed repeatedly before achieving their success. Be inspired and learn from their stories.

Pick up a biography of your favorite hero and read about their life. You’ll be surprised and motivated by the years and amount of struggle and failure they’ve had to overcome to get to where they are today.

Minimizing the likelihood of failure

“At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that and accept that and integrate that into your work ethic; you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren’t where you want to be, you will always be a failure.” — Erin Cummings

Just as you can minimize the likelihood of getting a sunburn, you can also minimize the likelihood of failure. You will still experience a failure to achieve your goals, but you can decrease the chances of it happening and its severity.

There’s no reason to fail more than necessary. Do your part, and success will come at a faster pace.

There are ﬁve primary reasons people fail:

A lack of perseverance or patience. Success can take a while to happen. You may have to go through numerous failures to ﬁnally ﬁnd success. Brace yourself and prepare for the possibility that success might take longer than you expect.

Insufﬁcient focus. Trying to do and achieve too many things ensures that you’ll never be great at any of them. You should have one big goal, one singular focus that your working on daily. What is yours?

Negative attitude. Optimism and positivity are necessary to get started and to keep moving toward your goals. If you get caught up in negative thoughts and negative expectations, you’re going to give up before you reach your goal.

Have Options. When you fail, it’s important to tailor your approach based on your new positive perspective. Avoid holding on too tightly to just one approach. Be ﬂexible, have options, an alternate plan, and you’ll have a better chance of reaching your goal. Remember that the goal is to ﬁnd success, not to prove that your ﬁrst instincts were correct.

A lack of effort. You’re going to have to wrap your mind around the fact that success does not come easy. It’s going to take massive action and effort on your part. Mediocre efforts lead to mediocre results.

Are you guilty of mediocre effort? Why stack the deck against yourself? Avoid this mental trap. Decide now that you're going to put forth massive effort towards accomplishing tasks and goals every day. Your future self will thank you.

Conclusion

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”— Robert F. Kennedy

“I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustrations were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.” — Tony Robbins

Stop being afraid of failure; it’s paving the road to your success. Approach your goals optimistically, conﬁdently, and with massive effort and focus. A fearless mindset is your best defense against the fear of failure.

Having the right perspective on failure, keeping positively motivated, and with plenty of optimism, you will quickly start turning failure into wisdom to help you achieve your goals and success in life.