We’ve all had that whirlwind of emotions when things don’t go to plan. Failure is a normal part of life. We put ourselves in challenging situations all the time. Whether falling short of the mark by a big or small amount, suddenly or gradually, failure cannot be avoided. Whilst we can’t stop the rush of feelings that comes with failure, we can control our response.Trying to avoid failure in every area of your life is not the answer. The key is to embrace the powerful learning opportunity it offers.
So let's take a dive into the experience of failure and discover the steps you can take to turn these set-backs into catalysts for growth
What Is Failure?
When we fail, our reality falls below our expectations. A gap is created between what we envisioned and what actually happened. It’s an experience that can stop us in our tracks and can manifest as small setbacks or big disappointments. We might have seen failure approaching or it might have struck with no warning. Whatever its timing, failure often sets off a storm of emotions: anger, disappointment, despondency and self-doubt. We might find ourselves faced with self-criticism, anxiety and stress. Failure does not feel nice. Yet, this can be the start of using its potential for growth and future resilience.
When Does Failure Happen?
Every time we challenge ourselves, we could fail. It's the flip side of aspiration and goals – the risk that goes with reaching for something that's important to us.
Even the most comprehensively planned actions can be derailed by unforeseen events or situations outside of your control. Failures can happen in familiar environments or situations we have never been in before. This means that failure can often be a constant partner on the path to achieving goals. With this in mind, each moment of failure can be seen not as a goal-ending moment but as a chance to learn, a moment of reflection that provides a step towards success in the future.
Responses to Failure: Learning From Your Muscles
Why do we put ourselves through the challenge of lifting weights at the gym week after week? It's about getting stronger. The process our muscles go through to get stronger can be seen as an analogy for how we can handle failure and growth in other areas of our lives.
When you're at the gym, you're intentionally challenging your muscles beyond what they're used to. You're asking them to fail, but in a controlled, progressive way because you know that this enables your muscles to grow and strengthen. Failure leading to strength, how does that happen?
Stressing the muscles
When you put your muscles under stress, the muscles fibres get tiny tears, energy stores in the muscles are depleted and the muscle fibres tighten. Straight after the workout you may feel tired. Over the next couple of days, you may ache and feel stiff, this is delayed onset muscle soreness. The discomfort is actually the body starting to the process of repair and recovery.
Recovery period
But the muscles can't do this on their own. They will not get stronger without a recovery period and proper nutrition. If you do without the recovery after the initial stress, the body’s adaptation will not happen.
Super-adaptation
But here's the thing. The body does not just repair your muscles back to how they were before you stressed them, it takes them beyond that state, over-correcting. It's the body preparing itself for you challenging it again. It's like the muscles are thinking, "We need to get stronger in case that challenge happens again.” The result? Stronger, more resilient muscles over time.
Miss out any of the challenge, the recovery or proper nutrition and the improvements from adaptation will not come.
What if we tackled our challenges like a well-planned progressive training cycle?
Let's start by looking at two responses that prevent personal growth because they miss out key stages in the challenge, recovery, adaptation cycle
Responses to Failure: Preventing Growth
When outcomes fall short of expectations, there are two responses that prevent growth: giving up or struggling on to the end goal.
Giving Up
When things go wrong, your immediate response might be to give up. You might find yourself saying, “That’s it, I’m done with that. It’s too difficult and not for me. I was wrong to think I could do it in the first place.” Does this sound familiar? It probably does. It’s a natural, immediate response to failure that many of us experience. Sometimes we feel like this after a difficult first workout session in response to the discomfort, aches and tiredness we might feel.
But how many times have you felt this when trying something new? How often have you then found yourself glad that you carried on, grateful for the rewarding experience that eventually comes?
What’s more, consistently stopping after failure can have longer-term consequences once the initial relief passes. You might start avoiding new experiences and challenges, try to avoid the difficulty of failure altogether. You are left where you started.
Struggling On
Struggling on is like pushing through workouts without proper form and recovery. This approach can end in burnout or injury. Tenacity is valuable. But sometimes in our persistence we don't give ourselves the chance to fully adapt.
Just as you might go onto your next workout still in physical discomfort and tired, you might do just enough to lessen the immediate emotional impact of the failure to keep you moving towards your goal. But the residual impact is still there. The initial tidal wave of negative emotions has gone but an undercurrent remains. You achieve your goal but at a cost.
The constant emotional drain associated with struggling on can leave you exhausted and potentially taking away your sense of enjoyment and passion. It can leave you feeling burnt out and ready to turn your back on what you always thought you wanted.
Responses to Failure: Applying the Muscle Lesson
Just as our muscles grow stronger through cycles of challenge, rest, and adaptation, our thinking and feeling self can develop resilience and strength through a similar process. The key lies in approaching our challenges outside of the gym in the same way as a carefully thought out strength training programme.
Let’s explore an approach to personal growth that mirrors the automatic cycle used in muscle development. The following four steps provide one way of transforming failures into opportunities for personal growth.
1. Keep Challenging Yourself
Don’t avoid setting yourself goals and challenges with the associated chances of failure. As we’ve seen with muscle growth, overcoming challenges can involve discomfort and patience but done with a gradual approach it can lead to growth. Break the big target down into smaller challenges. As you overcome each one, your confidence, skills and positive experiences will increase.
2. Create the Right Environment
Challenging yourself the right environment is vital to enable adaption and repair in the face of a failure. Having a supportive environment is like giving your muscles the recovery time and right nutrition.
The environment is made up the those factors external to you and those within you. The external environment can include the people, for example, trainers, teachers, family and friends, the learning resources and time. Ensure that the external environment is supportive and enabling, and doesn’t make you feel bad if you fail.
The internal environment is just as important. This is how you think about your set-back and whether you get beyond the negative thoughts of the immediate aftermath. Develop a confidence in your ability to learn and overcome the setback, acknowledge where you have shown resilience before and remember why you wanted to challenge yourself in the first place.
3. Analyse the Failure and Create a Plan
The muscles automatically respond to stress by repairing and developing muscle fibres and increasing energy stores. You can start the repair process off by asking yourself what went wrong and why? Analyse where there is a gap in your skills, techniques or attributes and work out a plan to bridge that gap.
4. Implement the Plan and Come Out Stronger
Implement your plan, develop your skills and mind-set. In this way, you will be prepared for the challenge when you face it again. You can move to the next challenge, resilient and ready to respond to any setbacks again.
Your Insight Into Growth
If you train, you know the gains you can get from following the cycle of challenging your muscles, giving them time to recover and using the positive adaptation for continued physical growth. In the same way, you can move towards personal growth. Keep these four steps in mind when experiencing failure: continue to challenge yourself, create the right environment, analyse the failure to create a plan and implement the plan to come out stronger. Failure can become something to embrace.
