Ep. 6 - Failure vs Success

Have you ever made a mistake? Jared accidentally left behind a microphone stand after a retreat day at a school 3 hours away. Was it a failure?

As we get older, we start to see failure as a bad thing. But it doesn’t have to be. Through our mistakes, we can actually learn how to do things differently or even better. We can turn failure into success and we can even become good at failing.

It’s all about not believing our thoughts. When you experience a failure, you might experience one of three responses. The first is fight - where you might assign the fault to someone or something else. The second is flight - which is avoiding those things or people that caused the mistake. These are both negative responses and we can’t learn or grow from them.

The third way is to reflect on the situation. There are a few ways you can be more reflective of your failings:

• You can acknowledge the things you did do well, even if you didn’t get the outcome you wanted your left with a series of things that you can focus on next time to do that thing even better
• By discussing with someone what you could have done better, you can identify other options to succeed next time.
• By journalling about the situation, you can process what happened and even give yourself advice about the situation.
• Lastly, you can talk to yourself. You can see things from a different perspective by talking to yourself in the third person.

By reflecting on failure we can actually get excited about it because we now have new information to have more success in the future. Even big companies like Apple and Google reward staff who make mistakes because it helps their companies grow and become even more successful.

Before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he found 10 000 ways not to invent the light bulb! In his words, “There’s a way to do it better - find it!”

Challenge for the week: write down “learning or success” and display it somewhere visible you will see it often as a constant reminder for yourself to reframe your thinking and see each failure as a learning moment or a success in helping you do life even better.

Follow us at facebook.com/projecthatch and Instagram at @projecth_hatch.

To contact us about retreats, leadership training and workshops, visit www.projecthatch.com.au or email us at [email protected].

Remember to subscribe to, rate and review the podcast to help spread the do life better message to more people just like you.

Now, go out and create a great day.