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You never know how to hit your goals if you don’t have some feedback when you miss the mark. Think of failure—even crushing failure—as a voice telling you “a little to the left.” Screwing up and blowing situations is part of the path to success. A bump in the road. Don’t ever believe you can do really well at anything without messing up in your earlier attempts.
Maybe you blow a presentation to a major potential client. You don’t respond to a boss’ warning. You may mess up a date with a really hot guy. You say something stupid. You do something that, as you look back, was idiotic.
This is how you learn. You’ll most likely not make this mistake again because you don’t like the consequences. Failure sucks. It feels bad and you don’t like it. Some people live their lives on what they think are safe, sure paths or with mates they think will never leave, never cheat, et cetera. All to avoid failure.
But failure is life’s very best corrective tool. It works. This is how you learn.
Don’t think that avoiding failure is a functional life goal. You’ll be limiting yourself and your experiences. You’ll be choosing to live a stunted life. You’ll probably also have a really boring time. I’m not suggesting that you throw yourself into new pursuits, new jobs or new relationships with no regard to the possibility of blowing it. Failure still counts. But you need to take the message and interpret it correctly.
Don’t think that this is just a warm, fuzzy pat on the back. I’m not attempting to make you feel better, although that's good, too. It's important not to miss the functionality of failure. Don’t walk past a tremendously helpful tool. Failure has lessons to teach you. Did you choose your goal well? Were you committed to doing what it takes to achieve this goal, or did you just give it your minimum? Just show up? Why did you fail? This is a hugely important question and don’t think the answer is that you’re useless or stupid. That’s not going to help you learn the lesson this failure has for you (and it’s very likely untrue).
Ask yourself—and any other informed person—why you failed.
What is there to learn in this experience? You need to know if the achievement of your goal will take perseverance and persistence—some goals require just that. You need to assess yourself as objectively as possible. Beating yourself up about failing really doesn’t help. It’s counter-productive. A waste of energy.
If you’ve set a goal for good reasons (another excellent question) and this is something you really, really want to achieve, then take your failures and learn from them. Learn.
Use the tool. Fail and fail again, if necessary. Just don’t do it blindly. And don’t live your life thinking failure will kill you. It won’t, even though failure feels pretty bad. It has lessons for you. Be smart enough to listen.
