4 Ways to use your failure as fuel

Don’t let your setback slow you down – failure can be a great source of energy.

 

1. REFRAME THE SETBACK

Fear of fail­ure can stop so many of us from tak­ing action, but what is fail­ure really? When you think about it object­ively, it’s noth­ing more than feed­back, an edu­ca­tion and a step to something bet­ter. A simple reframe like this, there­fore, can help you to see fail­ure from a more pro­duct­ive per­spect­ive and to appre­ci­ate that you always learn more from what goes wrong than from what goes right. Seen in this way, fail­ure becomes an exper­i­ence that devel­ops your resi­li­ence and con­fid­ence, elev­ates your ener­getic state and acts as a cata­lyst for trans­form­a­tion.

 

2. IMMERSE YOURSELF IN INSPIRATION

When faced with fail­ure, which comes in all shapes and sizes, this strategy helps to feed your ‘comeback-abil­ity’. You may have missed out on a pro­mo­tion, lost someone import­ant or had to shut down a busi­ness ven­ture. Com­ing back stronger from events like this isn’t always straight­for­ward, but when you immerse your­self in inspir­a­tion (such as read­ing or watch­ing pos­it­ive stor­ies), you find the energy not to let fail­ure defeat you, because inspir­a­tion is a force that breathes energy into you, com­pel­ling you to take action.

3.  HAVE SELF-COMPASSION

It’s import­ant for you to under­stand that fail­ing does not make you a fail­ure, it’s an event, not an iden­tity state­ment. If you’ve failed at something, remind your­self that you can’t learn to stand up without fall­ing or improve without crit­ical feed­back. The exper­i­ence may not be fun in the moment, but it’s a valu­able part of any per­sonal growth. Be kind and for­give your­self when you make mis­takes. You’re only human, and you must bal­ance these inev­it­able events with an appre­ci­ation of just how far you’ve come in order to be where you are today. Be proud of your fail­ures along the way and take more risks – it will be thanks to these so-called fail­ures that you come to know what you know.

4.  TRY ENERGY SWITCHING

Put simply, this is about switch­ing your energy from neg­at­ive to pos­it­ive actions. Neg­at­ive actions are unpro­duct­ive and include things such as end­lessly replay­ing the event in your head and find­ing someone or something to pin the blame on. These are ener­getic blocks to your flow. Pos­it­ive actions keep you focused on mak­ing pro­gress. These include activ­it­ies that help you clear your mind (exer­cise, journ­alling, med­it­a­tion) and remind you of the vis­ion you’re work­ing towards.