Embracing The Fall: The Ultimate Guide to Fail Your Way To Success

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The Ultimate “How To” Guide To Achieve Success From Failure

Let’s face it. At this point in your life, you may have read a few self-improvement books for women, but you’ve had a few stumbles, a few mishaps, and yes, a few failures.

Maybe a lot of failures.

You’ve accumulated a crap load of mistakes, a lot of scars and bruises and wounds, and maybe your share of regrets.

Trust me…They come courtesy of age and experience.

That’s all a normal part of life’s journey.

The problem though, is that with each mistake, each bruise and wound that we acquire, our tendency is to avoid whatever created or resulted in that hurtful experience.

And that makes perfect sense, right? Any reasonable person wants to avoid hurt or pain or discomfort. Right?

But the question I have for you today is this…

By avoiding the uncomfortable, and by “uncomfortable” I’m specifically talking about the experiences of making mistakes and failing, are you unknowingly trading away a better, richer more successful version of your life?

I know. It seems a bit counter-intuitive.

How can you be successful if you’re NOT avoiding failure?

And therein lies one of those pesky wrinkles in the fabric of life.

Because I don’t know of ANYONE who is successful who HAS NOT experienced failure.

Unfortunately, the majority of us have been wrong in our consideration of the concept of failure for our entire lives.

It’s been drilled into us since the time we were kids that “failure is bad”.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Failing, failing many times and failing often actually helps us to succeed, and helps us to be stronger and better for the experiences of having failed.

So how exactly, do we fail our way to success? I’m so glad you asked…

How To Fail Your Way To Success

1. Expect to fail.

But let it be a beneficial expectation in that you review the potential situation, evaluate “real” risks and potential pitfalls, then plan contingencies and alternate courses of action as best you can.
 

2. Don’t view potential failure as a negative and then focus solely on avoiding it.

View failure as a part of your process in reaching a successful outcome.

You don’t necessarily want to fail, but in most cases in any venture, odds are very likely That you could fail. By looking at failure as a likely possibility within your process, you can plan for it among many possibilities, and prepare as best you can.

This not only helps you to be prepared if things don’t go as planned, it also helps you to recognize and better understand your areas of vulnerability and the real potential for failure, and then do your best to strengthen and/or eliminate them.
 

3. In the case that you do fail, try to learn the lesson the first time so that you don’t have to repeat that specific failure.

There is always a lesson in failure.

Learn as much as possible about why and how you failed, make the necessary adjustments, then go back at it.

Repeat as necessary until you succeed. Then move on to the next task.
 

4. Look for clues to success in your mistakes.

This is related to the point made above. Here you are specifically looking for the secrets not only to not failing, but to actually succeeding and turning your situation around.

Search not only for what not to do…you already know that because if you’re paying attention, you know why you’ve failed.

The idea now is to look for indicators to help you understand how you can succeed.
 

5. Don’t be afraid to begin again.

Keep the long view.

“I want this now.” “I don’t want to ‘go through a process'”. “I don’t have time to be wrong.”

I can’t tell you how many times people, and in my experience especially women, hold onto a losing situation or circumstances where there is no win possible.

We often keep traveling a path we know will never reach what we envision to be a successful outcome simply because we’re afraid or resistant to the idea that we must start over.

Time spent is time spent. You can’t redeem the time either way.

Don’t be so afraid of starting over and success being another one or three or five years down the road, that you stay on a path that hasn’t yielded anything of value in ten years of trying, and never will.

And stop always wanting the shortcut. Be willing to put in the required work AND time for your own success.

Failure isn’t fun. Believe me when I say I’ve had my share of it and I know from personal experience how “un-fun” it can be.

But failure can be exceptionally valuable and even rewarding when put in the right context relative to what we’re attempting to achieve.

Failure can be your greatest teacher and a vital key to your success.

 
Don’t be afraid to fail. Be willing to do what it takes to find your success. Even when that means you fail. Because once you succeed, you’ll not only reap the benefits of success, but you can then help to teach others how to fail their way to life’s wins.

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Kimberly Clay is the founder and creative force behind What She Say. She’s a business professional, writer and editor who’s been creating and managing digital content for nearly twenty years. Her work is now focused in the areas of self-improvement and personal development, and she is passionate about helping other individuals, especially women, to find a path for living their best life.