Failure — One of Life's Greatest Gifts.

"Failure is an opportunity to learn and grow," says Los Angeles-based psychologist Crystal I. Lee. She says, "Failure is an opportunity to be embraced and analyzed rather than something to run away from."

The good news is that the key traits needed for success — growth mindset, grit, and psychological flexibility — can be cultivated.

Growth Mindset

"Great works are performed, not by strength but perseverance."

- Samuel Johnson

How we view and manage failure helps cultivate success in our lives, and that starts with having a growth mindset. A growth mindset means that we believe that we can grow and learn through hard work and effort, even in the face of failure.

Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts).

We believe mastery is possible if we keep trying, take chances, and work toward improving. Failure is not a permanent condition and not even close.

When we falsely believe that our abilities are fixed, we interpret our failure as proving that we can't be successful, and we stop trying.

When we understand that our abilities can be stretched and we can learn new skills, we perceive failure as a fantastic learning opportunity.

Grit

To stretch our abilities, we next need grit, "a combination of passion and perseverance."

To have grit means you have courage and show the strength of your character. A person with true spirit has passion and perseverance.

Having grit means relentlessly pursuing your goals and not allowing setbacks to deter your progress. It's more than talent and smarts; it's the practice of constantly learning while putting forth effort.

You set your goals, and you follow through with them. A person who works hard to follow through on commitments has true grit. It is a word you hear only sometimes.

"Grit is having stamina," says professor and TED speaker Angela Duckworth. "Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like a marathon — not a sprint."

If you're gritty, you succeed through endurance, perseverance, passion, hard work, and practice, practice, practice. If you persist and face all the obstacles, you may win, argue those who tout grit as a component of success.

Psychological Flexibility

To move forward with a growth mindset and grit, the final ingredient is psychological flexibility, or "the ability to adapt behavior to a constantly changing world and the changing needs we find ourselves facing." Kind of like the last two years we've experienced.

Psychological flexibility refers to your ability to cope with, accept, and adjust to difficult situations.

"Having psychological flexibility allows you to think outside the box and be creative when confronted with obstacles," says Lee. "It also allows you to change course if your actions aren't working."

When you experience stressful life events, psychological flexibility protects you against negative feelings and thinking and promotes positive mental health.

Psychological flexibility acts as a buffer between stress and adverse psychological outcomes. This allows you to harness failure and use it as a tool to move forward and encourage yourself to persevere UNTIL you're successful.

Learning and Growing from Failure

There's no such thing as failure; there's only feedback, and what you do with that feedback ultimately determines your success.

When you fail, you have three options:

• You can give up, which is the only absolute failure
• You can try to avoid disappointment.
• You can learn from your loss and try again.

Don't Give Up.

Failure is an illusion that you've convinced yourself is reality. Failure was never meant to stop you — it's intended to help you realize and overcome your shortcomings so you can learn, grow and move on toward success in life.

When you feel like you're failing, the first thing you want to do is give up. To stop, to quit. But you can't resist that impulse if you're going to learn and grow.

Failure's purpose is to break down the old you uneducated you and build up the new you that's learning a growing from every failure. It's your choice; you can stay down when things go wrong or jump your butt back up and not allow this to happen to you but FOR you.

Every situation is a chance to become what you have always intended to be, don't let it get you bitter; let it make you better.

Humans fall, so what. Losing alone isn't wrong, but refusing to return after falling is. All that matters is that you get back up and keep going.

Promise yourself that when you fail and fall, you will get back up more robust, intelligent, wiser, and more determined than ever to be successful.

Could you stop avoiding it?

Feeling hurt and sad when you've failed to achieve something, regardless of how big or small it may be, is only natural, and there's little point in dwelling on it.

Nowadays, people put too much effort into avoiding failure, leading to painful situations.

Running away and trying to avoid failure will always teach you something. Step out of your comfort zone, and take new risks. Stop thinking about the rejection you may face and accept that you will fail, and you'll be okay.

As you move forward, you'll realize that failure is simply a part of life and success — the sooner you start treating failure as the learning opportunity it is, the sooner you'll reach your full potential.

If you're still struggling to deal with failure and feel like nothing is helping, don't be afraid to seek professional help.

No matter how overwhelmed you feel, remember that people are dedicated to helping you overcome failure and move on with your life.