Say Goodbye to Failure
Want a simple thing that could change the direction of your business? Say goodbye to failure. Just banish the word from your vocabulary.
We live in a culture of extremes. Reward and punishment, success and the f-word (no, not that one). There’s a dank, stinking puddle of judgement and shame ready and waiting when things don’t go as planned.
“Fail fast, fail often” is a concept that serves a purpose in the world of software development, but it doesn’t necessarily work well in your own business. Espeically if you’re not part of silicon valley culture.
Reframe “failure” with better words
Our brains are wired to protect us. So we tend to default to negativity bias. Which means it’s too easy to make the leap from “Well, that didn’t work” to “I’m a failure!”
Instead of saying “I failed,” change what you tell yourself, and watch what happens.
“Okay, that didn’t work the way I hoped it would,” can take a lot of the sting away.
The thing that went wrong might not be a big deal.
You might feel embarrassed.
Or you might feel like utter crap. That’s normal. Give yourself a minute to wallow. Just don’t get stuck there.
Brain science for the win: Turn failure into an opportunity
Here’s the big reason you don’t give in to “failure,” and why you might want to dump the word altogether: Thoughts form neural pathways. You can imagine them as ruts in the brain. Repeating the same messages over and over makes the ruts deeper.
Use your thoughts to make good ruts.
Banish the word failure and replace it with something else to create new neural pathways. It doesn’t happen overnight, but changing what you say to yourself generates new, healthier habits of thinking.
Instead of beating yourself up, you establish a practice of shifting to a stance of learning.
Your plan didn’t work out. It’s disappointing. It happens to everyone. Give yourself a little time to let the dust settle and start feeling better.
Then start asking questions.
- What went wrong?
- What went right?
- What do you need to change to make it work better?
- What things can stay in place?
And remember, always: A plan or project going sideways is about the things: research, strategy, tools, tactics, and timing.
A project isn’t you, even if you poured endless hours and energy into it.
If the thing that didn’t work is marketing, then know this: Marketing is about trying and testing. That’s true whether you’re starting out on your own or the CEO of Coca-Cola (anyone remember the disaster of New Coke?).
Huge, well-established companies with multi-million dollar budgets don’t always get it right, either.
Marketing is not a laboratory experiment – it happens in the real world, where things are unpredictable and don’t always go as planned.
You can’t ever have total control over outcomes.
Sometimes things work out better than you ever dreamed they would. But when they don’t, think about how you respond. There’s one f-word that can be cathartic, and one that might be better left behind.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash