No More Beat Up Mode: Choosing to Grow

There are constant ups and downs in life. You can’t always anticipate the downs. Sometimes they’re out of your control or you may not be prepared to deal with them yet. Dealing with the downs of life can be difficult and takes practice. A lot of it is about your frame of mind. How you perceive your struggles can change the way you react to them. A key foundational principle within our leadership coaching programs that can help with the perception of everyday adversity is the concept of No Beat-Up Mode.

No Beat-Up Mode is the idea of not looking at losses as inherently negative. There will always be losses in life. They are unavoidable. However, these losses can be useful for an individual’s future. When something bad happens to you, you can benefit from what it teaches you. Instead of wallowing in defeat, you can choose to accept it, learn from it, and move on. The knowledge that you accumulate with every failure throughout your life turns into wisdom over time. Failures can be extremely important moments in your life if you stop, reflect, and figure out what you can do better to improve yourself. This is a major way that you can grow as a person into the best version of yourself.

Failure is life’s best teacher.

Failures are ultimately learning lessons. A good example of this would be the story of how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Thomas Edison famously tried countless different styles of glasswork and mechanical structures to figure out how to create the first light bulb. He worked tirelessly for years. His designs wouldn’t work no matter how hard he tried. When he finally did succeed in inventing the first light bulb, and he was asked about failure when it came to his previous designs that didn’t work, he said a famous quote that has lived on for decades. He said,

"I haven't failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison

Edison used the cumulative knowledge that he gained from each failed design and used them in his endeavour to create the design he really needed. He used his failures rather than allowing them to define him. He learned from his mistakes and kept trying.

Don’t give up, even if you fail.

Another aspect of No Beat-Up Mode is the idea that giving up doesn’t solve problems. It ensures that you will definitely fail. An example of this would be a football team that is losing at half time. The hypothetical team is losing tremendously. It seems like the game is already over and there’s no point in watching the rest of it. The team goes back to their locker room, exhausted and worried. Instead of accepting defeat, they regroup and strategize. When they go back out on the field, they keep fighting for the win even if it looks hopeless. They don’t give up before the game is over, they persevere and adapt. Many of the greatest football games result in this underdog team rising up again in the second half, claiming their victory despite all odds. 

This concept is also mentioned in a second quote by Edison. He said,

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” - Thomas Edison

Edison didn’t get discouraged when his designs failed and that mindset led to ultimate success. To this day, no one remembers Edison because of his thousands of failures, but for his famous triumph. If you can determine what is getting in your way of success and fix the problem accordingly, you can turn things around and end up winning.

Reflection is key.

Quintessential parts of No Beat-Up Mode are reflection and polishing. If you fail but don’t learn anything from it, it was all for nothing. Athletes have to deal with failure constantly. Tennis players throw foul balls, gymnasts lose their balance on the beam, figure skaters slip and fall onto the ice when they jump, baseball players strike out, etc. One aspect that separates successful professional athletes and those who don’t make it to the professional level is the use of failure as a teacher rather than letting it overcome your ambition. 

Failure is never the goal but if it does happen, and it will, you can reflect on what caused it and use that knowledge the next time you try. Like polishing a piece of silver, with elbow grease you can buff out the already existing metal to reveal the shine underneath. For an athlete, maybe a tennis player’s aim, a gymnast’s posture, a figure skater’s timing, or a baseball player’s reaction time need to be improved. They train, practice, and listen to their coaches, all culminating in progress that allows them to win next time. This is why training to become a professional athlete doesn’t happen in a day. It takes years of constant failure and progress, over and over. 

What would be negative, apart from allowing failure to convince you to give up, is if someone made the same mistake over and over without changing. If you don’t reflect on your mistakes, it can hurt you. Nothing will change. You will just keep failing. The silver will remain dull and unremarkable. If you don’t acknowledge and learn from your failures, you may never get past them.

In conclusion, failure can enrich us and make us better people. Failure is what you make of it. You can let it destroy your self-esteem and discourage you from pursuing your goals, or you can see it as a learning experience and accept the fact that every single person fails sometimes. No Beat-Up Mode can help to remind you that if you make a mistake today, that just gives you the opportunity to be better tomorrow. It can be hard work, it may take time, and it may be frustrating but the end result will be worth it. Things will never be perfect, you will never be perfect, and that’s okay. Just reflect, learn, adapt, and keep moving forward.