A Healthy View of Failure

“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.” — Oprah Winfrey

A healthier and more accurate mindset about failure starts with seeing failure from a different perspective. If you can view failure in a positive light and as purposeful to your success, your fear starts to dissipate. You might even learn to like it, to enjoy it, as it's moving you closer and closer to your goals.

Think of how drastically your behavior will begin to change when you view failure in a positive light as a purposeful part of your future success.

Learn to enjoy failure with the following strategies, and success will become a certainty:

Fail quickly. Most people spend too much time thinking and planning. The sooner you get started and begin failing, the sooner you start receiving an education from the world. You’ll find success much sooner.

Are you losing your mind, Mike? No, I am being honest with you, get busy, get out there, get started, and begin failing as soon as possible.

Avoid identifying with failure. Failing only means that the approach you used didn’t work. It doesn’t mean that YOU are a failure. It’s not a statement about you. There’s no reason to take it personally. It has nothing to do with YOU as a person. If one approach didn’t work, try another, and keep trying until you figure out what works.

Failure is the most accurate feedback you’re ever going to receive. Your belief on whether or not something will work is just an opinion, a guess. The same can be said regarding the advice and opinions of others. The only 100% accurate information you will ever receive comes from actually trying and failing. Failure will tell you if your idea is sound or not; if not, try again.

Look at it like it's a big game. At the end of each video game level, a difficult challenge or a monster must be defeated. Life is no different. You don’t fail in a video game and throw yourself on the couch while lamenting that you’re a failure.

Handle your failures in life the way you’d handle failures in a video game.  Start over and keep trying until you’ve beaten the monster until you win!

You are stronger than ANY failure. You might not like being wrong or failing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take it. You’ll be fine; you’re going to be better and smarter because of it. It may take some practice, but you can learn to get past failure and move on to success.

It’s not hard to see that failure can be viewed positively because it provides accurate, intelligent, and purposeful feedback on your road to success. You’ll never learn more than you’ll learn from your failures. It has so much to give you if you’re willing to accept it.

Fail quickly and fail often!