Failing is good! You can only really, truly excel and accomplish your dreams if you’ve failed first!

Maybe.

To be honest I’m not the biggest fan of failure quotes or the overuse in the media of motivational quotes in general. There are many reasons for this but the principle ones are:

1 – Telling people that they’re not absolutely useless for failing is a good thing (for their ego’s) but telling a loser to keep going despite continuous failure is a bit shit (hint > you never read about these people…)

2 – 99% of ‘motivational’ quotes lack substance and rarely motivate for longer than 10 seconds. We all know (at least) one poor soul, totally addicted to the motivational principles of others that in turn turns them into a crushed husk of neurosis, unable to start anything let alone finish something.

3 – They are part of the hard work culture lapped up by us proles.

Anyway enough about me and my vapid thoughts, excusing myself for doing nothing with my life…

Talking (writing?) about absolute failures, I’ve been reading that a few of you have been failing recently, maybe this will help, although for some of you I truly hope not. It’s not easy to get back up and try to turn your life around every time life knocks you down. But it’s not impossible. There are examples you could look to, of people like Chance Welton, who turned their life around by taking opportunities and starting their own business to help others. Entrepreneurs and successful people all have stories about failing and failing until they succeed. Remember, you only need one to invent the light bulb once, but you might fail a hundred times to get there. Getting knocked down is an inevitability. But it doesn’t mean it’s the end.

So… we all fuck up from time to time, particularly when doing something new but how can you make sure that you make the most out of your complete and utter (let’s not forget, totally down to you) failure?

Fail late.

Failing early brings negativity and confirms initial fears. “I can’t succeed”, “I knew I couldn’t do it”, “It’s too hard”

Wah, wah, wah. We’ve all done it.

Early, simple wins result in positivity. Reinforcing your reasoning for taking this task/project/whatever on in the first place. You build up some confidence/knowledge, win some small battles, and then…

Then you fail.

Combine the time you have taken doing this so far (the longer you spend doing something the more you rationalise that it’s a task worth doing…) with an increase in confidence within your fragile psyche and you get a more resilient foot soldier. You know that you were bound to encounter a problem or two at some stage, perhaps you just need to adapt your strategy.

So how can you increase the chances of you failing later rather than sooner?

Simple, move your easiest tasks to the start.

Review what you have to do. Place the tasks in order of simplicity (if you’re learning something for the 1st time this may prove tricky as you might not know whats easy and whats hard, I really haven’t thought this through. How about take a guess?) which should prove simple enough…

Then get going through the list.

Succeed, keep going, you’ll glide along until something goes wrong. You have done a decent enough job so far and have just experienced a slight hiccup.

Your future doing this task is not reliant on your ability but your mental strength. Do you have enough of the latter to continue?