Overcoming failure can be a difficult lesson to learn, especially as an entrepreneur.
Some form of failure is a nearly inevitable part of starting your own business, product, or blog. Yet the most successful business owners know not to allow a fail stand in their way. They learn to overcome failure by reframing it into success.
Overcoming failure relies heavily on changing your mindset about “failing.”
One of the first lessons to learn about failure is that failing at something doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole experience should be labeled negatively. Sure, an unfavorable outcome can be perceived as a failure from the outside-in. For instance, if you didn’t get the job you applied for or your first product launch flopped, other people may look at those situations and label them as unsuccessful.
But are they missing the bigger picture? Another key lesson in overcoming failure is to ignore how others perceive your experience, and instead begin reflecting on how that experience may have personally impacted you, both negatively and positively.
In this post, you’ll learn why identifying the small wins in your overall experience of failure can be incredibly beneficial for your overall business growth.
Why Overcoming Failure Is So Important
Learning how to reframe failure into success is incredibly important because when we fail, we tend to bring ourselves down. We harshly judge ourselves for not being perfect and beat ourselves up for not reaching our desired outcome. Sometimes, we can even feel like giving up.
Failure also causes frustration and an overall lack of confidence — two sentiments that can hugely impact your business. When you’re frustrated, you end up fixating on your perceived failure instead of paving the path ahead. When you lack confidence, you can inhibit your creativity for fear of “failing” once again.
As you can imagine, these negative sentiments can also bring your business down. This is why overcoming failure as a business owner is so important.
The best way to not let your perceived failures consume you is to shift your mindset about each and every “fail” you encounter. Overcoming failure is learning to find the good that came out of a crappy situation.
How To Find Success in Failure
Learning how to reframe your perceived failure into success can take some practice. So how do we actually identify the positive outcomes of our failures? Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you find a really cool job opportunity but you know you’re slightly underqualified for the position. Still, you decide to apply anyway because the job seems worth it.
You’re called up for an interview, and the process requires you to complete a number of tasks that take you out of your comfort zone. Perhaps you spend a day on site working with your potential new team, or you’re forced to be quick on your feet when answering scenario-based interview questions you’ve never encountered before. You walk away feeling proud that you conquered the complex interview process.
A few weeks later you find out you didn’t get the job. At first, you may feel like you failed. Your friends and family that knew about the job may also perceive the rejection as a failure.
Yet after further introspection, you realize you’ve grown as an individual by just applying for this job in the first place. You begin to realize that, in fact, there were several small successes along the way. You put yourself out there and went for an opportunity you knew you were slightly underqualified for. The company liked your application and chose you as a potential candidate. When it came to the complex interview process, you did the best you could.
You walked away feeling confident after you conquered the interview, something you were probably really nervous about. Plus, you also walked away with the knowledge it takes to apply and interview for this kind of job position.
These are all valuable experiences that have led to your professional and personal growth. Your success is found in that growth.
Small Wins Can Lead To Bigger Success
Ignore the end result of “your failure” for just a second.
Instead of holding onto the fear of failure after receiving a job rejection email, instead, focus on the feeling of success you felt after the interview. While not getting the job can be perceived as a failure to others, you can choose to look at how personally and professionally beneficial the experience as a whole has been. That’s called overcoming failure.
The act of putting yourself out there and getting out of your comfort zone is something that will help you eventually “land the job,” or reach whatever desirable outcome you’re running after.
Instead of counting your failures, count each and every experience you go through as a step in the right direction. For example, with each job you apply to, the more you polish your application skills. Or for each new product or course you launch, the better you’ll learn how to market them.
With each small step, you’ll get closer and closer to your end goal. Eventually, your desired end result will come.
The key is to always look for the small wins in what others perceive as failure. If you change your mindset, everything else will follow suit.
Do You Have Experience Overcoming Failure?
I’d love to hear from you! Have you had an experience overcoming failure? In what ways did that experience propel you and your business forward?
And if you still struggle with overcoming failure in your business and everyday life, did you find this article helpful?
Let’s start a discussion in the comments!
