Fail Better, Feel Better

This post is by Sean Cook of HigherEdCareerCoach.Com.

It’s easy to kick yourself when you fail. We all do it and sometimes, frankly, pity parties serve a purpose, so don’t resist the temptation to throw one for yourself every once in a while.

Just don’t over-indulge and wallow in misery for too long. There’s no use in failing if you aren’t going to learn something, get over it, get over yourself, get right with what you got wrong, and get going.

Get over it

Lick your wounds if you need to. Hide out and watch sad movies. Call a friend to whine.

Throw a wake for your failed idea. Talk about the good times. Talk about the bad. Talk about how your failure made you feel like the drunk guy with a lampshade on his head at the office Christmas party,  who had to go face everyone in January. Then…

Get over yourself

Somebody will always have it better. Somebody will always have it worse. But no one can ever do it like you do. Sure, life is hard sometimes … for each and every one of us. You’re not the only failure in the world, and most things worth doing aren’t easy. They are hard.

The hard … is what makes it great.*

Get right with what you got wrong

Once you’ve thrown the pity party and shaken off the dust of failure, it’s time to clean up the mess. Everyone knows that it’s not really a party unless something gets broken, so there should be plenty of shards and remnants lying about.

There is a great songwriter from Athens, GA (where I live these days), named Bill Mallonee, and I’ve been a big fan of his since college, when he was fronting a band called Vigilantes of Love.

In one of my favorite songs, he sings about picking up the pieces of  his “might-have beens” and “holding them up to the light.”  I love that imagery, because I imagine being bathed in the prismatic gleam of  sunlight passing through a broken shard of glass, and having a singular moment of enlightenment.

“So that’s how I broke it. Wow. But look at the pretty rainbows.” It’s not all bad. And once you’ve seen how  you broke something, you can find ways around potential failures in the future.

Get going

After all this, you should be ready to try again. You may not try the same things you did before. You may try them, but avoid the roadblocks that set you off course before. You may find new roadblocks in your way. But you’ll be better prepared for them than before. You’ll fail “better”, because once you make a habit of deconstructing failure, you’ll see it as an opportunity to learn, not to mourn.

And that should make you feel better about your efforts, your mistakes, and yourself, so that you can get back to going forward in your life and career.

When have you failed? And what helped you move past it?

*That’s a quote from “A League of Their Own.” I wish I could take credit for it!

Sean Cook is a certified Life Purpose and Career Coach from Athens, GA. Read more at HigherEdCareerCoach.Com