Whether I’m coaching one-on-one, at a workshop, or in our digital course, the first thing I do is teach all my clients to dare to dream — to be bold and go after what they really want in their lives. I’m not talking about having one or two dreams. I get clients to create dreams in all areas of their lives. Inevitably, there is one issue that arises when going after a dream: failure.
We All Fail
It’s guaranteed that you will fail at some point while pursuing a dream in your life. But when you fail, will you misunderstand your failure’s lessons like most people usually do? Or will you relate powerfully to it and grow from the struggle? Most people are afraid of failure and never face it directly, thinking that admitting failure will prevent success. It’s critical to understand that the opposite is true: experiencing failure is just as important as, and usually a stepping-stone to, achieving success.
Damian is a new HG client who recently had an ironic encounter with failure: “The same week I started HG’s Inner.U digital course, I lost my senior management job in financial services. Inner.U turned out to be a lifesaver. Because I had already started some of the course, I was able to take it in stride and actually turn the setback into an opportunity.”
Thankfully, Damian was able to take advantage of the lessons he was learning in Inner.U: “Inner.U showed me how to stay on top of my inner dialogue and not remain captive to my past that could lead me into a downward spiral. For me, Inner.U offered a systematic way to take charge of my own story—and with that, take charge of my own life.”
So you see, failure is not a dirty word. Yet most of us have a dirty relationship with it. Failure is smart, brilliant, and painful; that pain is honest. Most people do everything to avoid real pain, but this is a mistake, especially in failing.
Admit It
The first thing I have my clients do is admit defeat. Whether it’s in your love life or how you handle money or your career, there really is a point at which you should do yourself a favor and admit you’ve hit a wall. For Damian, he had to admit and be accountable for what happened. He was let go. He had to stop blaming himself or others for what went wrong. Blaming yourself is not the same as taking responsibility. Blaming yourself leads nowhere.
Move Through It
Next, I help my clients really see that they have landed facedown in a sloppy puddle and are stuck in a mess that needs to be figured out and cleaned up. Knowing this helps them develop a more powerful relationship to failure. I advise them to “tee-up” a good cry, in the context of facing it once and for all. In this stage, you’re going to surrender, cry, and then “get back on the horse” much smarter and stronger. It’s important to feel whatever you’re feeling, so you can move through it, but you can’t fake this part. Mourn so you can let it go and start to understand the failure. Once you throw out your white flag and admit you’re sitting in a wreck of your own making, you’re closer to success than you’ve probably been in a long time.
Take Responsibility
This is when you need to come to terms with the truth that you failed, and it’s time to use hindsight to figure out what you would have done differently. Often, people don’t think they actually failed. Instead, they blame other people and situations, never taking responsibility. “It’s the economy.” “He did it.” “I didn’t have enough time.” And on and on. When you blame others, you can’t see what exactly happened or the impact of your choices, and so you can’t embrace the lesson you need to learn in order to later succeed.
For Damian, he had to look at his own inner narrative to figure out his lesson: “Finally, I had a chance to put a stop to the thought trains that held me back. Over the course of anyone’s life, many thoughts and actions are picked up almost unconsciously. For me, when I took stock of those stories and re-examined them with a sympathetic and realistic perspective, I was able to finally escape from fear.”
In order to see just how you failed, you must break it down honestly. What happened? What did you do wrong? What could you have done differently? Any honest regrets? In each failure, there’s a reason why and it’s usually a pattern in your life you must break. If you look back over your life, you’ll see that you repeated many of the same mistakes over and over. It’s because you never learned the lesson. Looking at the specifics of your failure and understanding what happened is the only way to learn the lesson and stop the pattern.
Learn the Lesson, Create New Rules, and Move Forward
I’ve had clients who’ve been divorced several times because they didn’t do the right work to learn the right lesson. When I got them to really look deeply at their broken marriages and tell the truth about what went wrong, they could see the mistakes they repeated and lessons they missed in all their marriages.
Once you know the lesson, it’s time to put rules into place so you don’t make the same mistakes. Every failure demands different actions as soon as possible. Rules really do diminish the chance of future failures. If you fail again in the same way, just know that you didn’t learn the right lesson the first time and whatever rules you put in place were not the right ones. Make your next honest adjustment to your actions and move on, wiser, and now closer this time to succeeding. If you need assistance creating this type of structure in your life, we have a proven method that can help you. Schedule a 30-minute consultation to get a feel for how the Handel Method® could benefit you and learn more about our coaching programs and services.
As Damian moved through the systematic steps of coaching in the digital course, he began to have a new perspective on failure: “After just a few short days, I felt happy to be free of my old job. I was able to face the world with a confidence that I could make anything happen. With that mindset, it felt inevitable that things would work out for the best. And that’s what happened! I found a position that was a much better fit for me.”
Learn to respect and study your past failures. They will provide you with a deeper level of understanding of who you are and what you need to change in your life. With each failure, if you surrender to it, own it, find the lesson, and change your actions, you will get closer to achieving what you really want.
Love,
Lauren