How To Stop Feeling Like A Failure And Grow Your Success

Failing sucks, but the reality is we all have to face it at one stage or another in our life or career. And the simple truth is, nobody wakes up feeling amazing after they’ve failed at something they’ve tried.

It can leave you feeling lost, frustrated and overwhelmed. 

But, if you’re a professional woman, business owner or female entrepreneur on a mission to better shape the way you live, work and play, it pays to know how to deal with it with skill and elegance!  

As a passionate brand and business coach who mentors high-performance women, I talk a lot about how to dream big, make your mark and get what you want. A huge part of building your brand and business success is learning how to set your most audacious leadership goals, designing a plan to grow your brand and business and then implementing an action plan to achieve them.

But I will not sugar coat your journey, as the road to success isn’t always a smooth one. Failure is part of success. And like so many other women entrepreneurs, I have learned this truth bomb first hand. I have also known, it doesn’t have to signify the end of your dream. Infact, quite the opposite can be true. It can ignite more inspired thought and action to help you keep forging towards your goals and awaken the leader in you more and more. 

As a senior leader, when building your brand, business or career, you will almost definitely experience many challenges, setbacks and disappointments. So, as part of your long term leadership development program, you must try to get as skilled at failing as celebrating your wins or risk losing courage and missing out on valuable opportunities to grow your business. And with that in mind, your goal-setting and plan for success should include a first-response strategy for failure.

Let me explain…

How you respond in your most challenging moments is what builds powerful, resilient and more empowered women leaders and a more authentic personal brand. 

The experience of your failures should be savoured, not brushed under the carpet. Any challenge or moment of adversity will certainly disrupt for a while, but on the flip side, they will also offer you a new platform of thinking. Your failures elevate your thought, test your passion and help you to exercise your mindset muscles to be a better problem-solver, critical thinker and skilled leader. 

Some of the world’s most celebrated brands and successful leaders are those that have arisen from the ashes of massive challenges, failures and moments of adversity. They are strong, authentic and multifaceted. And best of all, they have a story to tell. It makes them more relatable, authentic and connected to their ideal clients or target audience, and deeply rooted in passion and purpose.

What do you do when you feel like you’re failing miserably and are on the verge of throwing it all in? Do you question if it is all worth it or if you will ever achieve your vision for success? Should you give up or power up?  

If you have struggled in the past to make your vision your reality, you may have opted to give up at times. So to avoid the urge to throw in the towel during what may seem like your darkest hour, you must implement strategies to help you survive moments of failure and turn them into golden opportunities for growth.

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Strategies to Learn From Failure.

So what should you do to plan for failure and turn up the volume on your success?

Implement powerful self-coaching methods to help you unlock the what, why, how and where to from here when failure strikes.

Having a simple process in place to combat the aftermath of the failure deliberately and efficiently will help you thrive through them, continue to grow your business and brand, amplify your leadership skills and leverage from them for both your professional and personal development.  

I suggest you don’t wait until you have failed to have these systems in place. If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it’s that changes and disruption can shake our life, business or career in an instant. It’s up to you to future proof success by ensuring you are always learning from your failures.

Design a discovery process with a series of critical questions to consider to help you:

• Overcome The Fear Of Failure:  The best way to overcome the fear of failure is to lean into it. Don’t hide under a rock once you’ve hit a wall. Embrace the experience as part of the bigger picture and set about figuring out how you can learn and grow from it. With a disciplined approach to failure, you can make it one of the best life coaching sessions you’ll ever experience.
• Unlock Your Unique Story: Describe what happened (or is happening) with clarity and detail. Don’t miss anything out. Describe how it affected your brand, business or career goals, as well as how you feel about it. This is a very therapeutic process and may help you take the emotion out of the situation to document it in a step-by-step recount.

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• Identify Your Core Values and Acknowledge Your Strengths:   What core values were your honouring or challenged? This process will help you discover your strengths, acknowledge them and celebrate your individuality! How you behave, respond or react under duress makes you unique and authentic.  
• Give Depth To Your Brand By Unlocking Your Wisdom: Break down the critical lessons you’ve learned from what has happened to unlock the pearls of wisdom. You have a unique opportunity to explore innovation and the new ways of thinking born from disruption. So don’t be afraid to get curious and embrace the journey to create new ways of doing things so you can move forward with greater clarity, confidence and commitment.
• Use Your Power To Empower Others:  Now, think of ways to apply your key lessons and strengths to your personal brand, business or leadership space. This is an excellent opportunity for you to maximize and leverage this experience to be a more empowered female leader, develop your thoughtful insights and ideas and share them with the world to help others avoid the same pitfalls.

If you can implement a strategic approach to failure before it happens to you, you can avoid much of the feelings of confusion, overwhelm or being stuck without a plan to move forward confidently.   

You will also be able to create innovative strategies for any setbacks and failures as significant milestones for content, anecdotes, storytelling, and even your personal brand and business marketing strategies.

So please don’t shy away from your failures. Instead, lean into them to unpack their value and reveal their full power and potential to shape your world and create new pathways to success!