How to Move On From Failure

In business they say that the more failures you experience, the more successful you become.

That might be true, but you must deal with your failure effectively before you can move forward. There’s a process to making the most of your past choices.

You and your business can benefit from both your good decisions and your poor decisions. Our natural instincts make it challenging to benefit from our failures, but a mindset shift and a handful of simple strategies can make it easier. We need to avoid our knee-jerk reaction from getting upset, distract ourselves, withdraw, feel embarrassed, or give up altogether.

When you can benefit from failure, there is no failure!

Consider these strategies to move on from failure:

1. Learn the lesson

Every bad decision and every failure has a lesson to teach. It can be painful to reexamine what want wrong, but it is necessary. Do you know what’s more painful? Making the same mistake again. You need to take a little time to figure out what you can learn from this and how to do different and better next time.

2. Move on

Nothing good ever came from dwelling on things that went wrong. Yes, it happened. Once you’ve pulled out any lessons, it is time to leave it behind and move on.

3. Take responsibility

One of the worst things you can do after failure is point fingers at everyone but yourself. This is a time to take 100% responsibility and own up to what happened. You made the decisions, and you can learn from them.

4. Talk it out

If you are having trouble moving beyond what happened, it can be helpful to talk it over with someone. An outsider can give you an objective look at things and help with your next steps. Try to find someone who is successful in the area you had problems in, for example, don’t take financial advice from someone that just filed for bankruptcy. Choose to talk it out with someone that will help you better understand the situation.

5. Stay present

After a failure, it is easy to let your mind run wild with all the scenarios of what you should have or could have done. There is nothing good that will come of letting your mind dwell and recount the past, you must stay in the present. By paying attention to what is happening right now, you can begin to move forward.

6. Prevent a repeat event

Now that this event has passed you have a clear picture of how things can go wrong and information on how to prevent it in the future. Steer clear of repeating the past, and going down the same road again. This new information is invaluable to you, use it to move forward more wisely.

7. Remember what you still have

Your failure may have resulted in a loss of your business or a partner, but that isn’t the end of the world. Things like this happen, even to the most successful entrepreneurs, in fact, if you ask them they would tell you it definitely happens! It is part of the process, and you have to take a few setbacks to get to where you want to go. Don’t get wrapped up in what is lost, but be mindful of all you still have.

8. Forgive yourself

When you put yourself out there you will fail, it just happens, and that is okay. Don’t be hard on yourself. It is impossible to be perfect or have everything always work out. Forgive yourself and keep pressing on.

9. Look to the future

The next good decision you make is going to feel so good. Remember it is the contrast of experiences that give you the good times. The trialing times make a good time possible.

10. You are not your decisions

You are separate from the choices you make. Failure doesn’t make you bad any more than good decisions make you good. Your choices do not define you.

Failure isn’t all that bad after all. In fact, you can benefit from all your previous failures right now.

Make a list of every failure you’ve ever had and gone through the process of learning from each of them. What lessons can you learn from them? Imagine if you had done this after each mistake was made. Your life would be very different right now. It’s important we reflect on our failures, and successes, and find the things that went well and the things that did not go well. It is through this reflection that we can make better choices in the future.

Everyone fails.

The key to success is to make the most of failure and not get bogged down over them. Spend a few minutes each week reviewing what happened. Take a look at the things that went well. What lessons can you learn to make them more repeatable? Then look at your bad decisions and failures. Ask yourself what went wrong? Determine what you can learn from them.

Then you can start your week fresh and with some well deserved, new experiences to pull from in the future.

Here’s to creating the life you LOVE!