Let yourself stumble. Let yourself fall. Let yourself fail.
A study was done with 800 MBA’s on the notion of how to learn – all bright individuals who had flourished in academia and experienced very few academic failures. Because of their lack of failures, they weren’t forced to build the muscle to allow them to deal with failing. This muscle is resilience, and since they weren’t forced to build it, they weren’t strong because of it. The smart and thriving individuals had the footwork required to out-step the failures to prevent themselves from experiencing it. But not failing didn’t benefit these people and it won’t benefit you.
The results from the study showed not only did people fear failure, but they even feared the idea of failure. In its entirety, we hold ourselves back from situations where we might fail. We don’t go all in because what if when we do, we fail. We hold ourselves back from giving it our all so when we fail it won’t hurt as badly. We count ourselves out before even reaching the finish line.
But failure isn’t an negative word. It’s your mindset that can turn failure into being good or bad.
Successful founder of Spanx, a now billion-dollar company, credited her upbringing where her dad encouraged her to fail as to what led her to success. She mentions a powerful story of her dad asking her what she failed at that week in school, instead of asking her to tell him all the good things she did. He would then encourage her and congratulate her on the things she failed at. The lesson – failure became about the effort in trying instead of the outcome.
She stopped fearing the outcome and fearing failure, instead she focused on taking risks.
Lean in all the way to everything you do, even if you might fail. Let yourself hurt from the failure and then congratulate yourself on how hard you worked through the process. And try again, with as much gusto as you gave the first time.
So tell me, what did you fail at today?
Sara
