Failure is a gift for your future!

Failure is something we all face in life, but who wants to deal with that? The frustration or hurt we experience after letting ourselves down can be one of the hardest moments to get through. And it is magnified when we let our teammates down or someone who believes in us. After all the hard work we've done, it feels unfair. Why can't everything just go smoothly?

As I reflect back on the different times I have experienced failure, I realize I did not always react the same way. Sometimes I waved it off as unimportant with a shrug. I made excuses for what happened and refused to believe that I had indeed actually failed. This wasn't my fault. Other times I sank into feelings of shame. Feeling like I wasn't good enough or that I just couldn't do it (whatever "it" was). Self-doubt would creep in and I would question everything I thought I could do.

Failure is not the opposite of success. It is a part of success.

The question is not whether you will experience failure...but how you will respond to it. What are you going to do when you are face to face with that gut wrenching moment that leaves you feeling defeated and snatches the air from your lungs?

If you ignore it or make excuses, you gain nothing and continue to make the same mistakes. You walk away empty-handed. You don't get better and do nothing to prevent this from happening again.

If you allow the moment to cause you to feel shame, you get distracted by how miserable you feel. You allow your negative feelings to shape negative thoughts in your mind. You start a bad habit of negative self-talk saying things like, "why can't I get this?".

No Room For Shame in the Game.

The trick here is to shift your mind from seeing failure as something bad to embracing failure as a gift. This is an opportunity to grow and learn something. Your goal is to ask yourself, how can I use this to get better? There is no need to spend all your time focusing on how you messed up. It happened! It's done! There is nothing you can do to reverse time and make it disappear. What you can do is grow from this moment. Walk away from this situation with something you can do to take your game to the next level. Then you can face each failure with strength in knowing this moment has purpose and that purpose is to make you better!

"Failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it." -Hank Aaron