Failing Forward

The summary of my success in the fitness industry as a trainer, entrepreneur and now a mentor is really a result of my failures. That’s not to say that we should dwell or focus on our failures but rather be able to acknowledge and accept them.

I can only speak for myself but I find it important to sometimes on a tough day list off some of my proudest moments, the shinning victories, or the milestones of what I’ve created. The need to do this usually comes when faced with a big challenge, one that may be plaguing me with a certain level of dissension, pain, or fear. When I do this I’m often marveled, finding it almost unbelievable and full of curiosity as to how things came to be. This reflection provides a measure of character reinforcement and a source of inspiration to face the fear.

Once that warm fuzzy feeling of invulnerability is achieved you may often notice the dark clouds on the horizon; attracted by the fear you may be feeling at present challenges. Within those dark clouds reside the marks of previous monumental disasters, your mistakes, your missteps, your failures.

If I can give one piece of advice today it’s to face your failures, review them in detail, and acknowledge and use them immediately as the powerful lessons they are. My biggest failures are my biggest lessons. Once I accept the failure I realize that if I break it down the resulting information allows me to leap forward farther than I ever could have if I hadn’t failed to begin with.

Here’s how I do it.

1) Identify the big ass problem. Usually this has strong emotional ties, it makes me feel uncomfortable, maybe embarrassed, frustrated, angry or all of the above.
2) Try to strip away the emotion, and much like a fire, try to determine the point of ignition. For example one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was trusting a client “friend” to give us a verbal estimate and offer to organize a renovation. This mistake found me in a position where tens of thousands of dollars were wasted and I was now facing expenditure three times the original amount to complete the project, and the need to find all new people to do it.
3) Review any available information related to the problem. As time goes on you get smarter, you track more things, you keep better records, generally as a result of previous failure.
4) Review any information you have, if you have none make a list of things that would be helpful to have now that the situation has occurred. This way should a similar thing occur you’d have an idea what may help.
5) Formulate a plan for next time or update current systems to influence a future outcome.

Don’t’ beat yourself up, or really try to solve a problem that already happened, just have a plan to avoid the same outcome in the future.

That’s, in many ways, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned. If you’re solving problems you’re already one step behind. Work on altering future outcomes knowing you’ll face new situations.

No one likes to fail but it can be a valuable asset.