What really helps you move on from failure
Anytime I give a speech or lead a workshop, I’m always pleasantly surprised when people want to come up to me afterward and share something that my message sparked for them.
That happened after a keynote I gave just last week, and I want to share with you what I learned because I thought it was such a great strategy for moving on after a setback.
First, let me set the scene:
I was asked to speak to entrepreneurs and small-business owners (my people!) on one of my favorite topics: failure. I called my keynote “Permission to Screw Up” after my book of the same name and talked about how screwing up is one of the secrets to entrepreneurship: The people who have the courage to put themselves out there and keep trying even after they mess up are usually the most successful in the end.
But, of course, that’s easier said than done.
When I got up onstage, I began by talking about how I grew up in a house where failing meant learning. At the dinner table, my parents often talked about mistakes they’d made and what they had learned from them, and they encouraged me and my sister to do the same. As long as you learned from it, they told us, it wasn’t failure; it was how you grew.
I shared with the audience that it was only after I became a business owner that I learned my experience was not universal—and that I was very lucky to be raised this way. For some people, failure was never an option. They grew up thinking that if they failed, it meant they were a failure, and that mentality followed them into adulthood. Sadly, several people in the audience told me that was their experience.
I went on to talk about how a fear of failure or a complicated relationship with it can really hold you back—especially as a leader and entrepreneur. If you’re afraid to fail, that means you might not take as many risks or put yourself out there. It might mean that when you make a mistake, it can cause you to get really down on yourself and allow doubt to creep in, which can stop you from trying again or taking another step forward.
I offered a few tools and perspectives that can help people get unstuck when failure stops them in their tracks. One is something I learned from a friend of mine called the “two-minute pity party.” It’s kind of what it sounds like: Whenever he faces a setback or something doesn't work out the way he wants, he sets a timer for two minutes and allows himself to stew in his emotions. For two minutes, he said, he can feel however he wants: angry, sad, guilty, annoyed, etc. But when that timer is up, he tells himself it’s time to reset and move on.
There are two things I love about this strategy: The first is that it emphasizes the human aspect of failure. No matter how you grew up thinking about it, failure can be a bummer. No one wants to mess up, even if you know you can learn from it, and it’s probably going to cause you to feel a certain way. But ignoring those feelings or shoving them down in favor of putting on a brave face and moving forward isn’t actually helpful. As my therapist often reminds me, the only way to get to the other side of an emotion is to embrace it and feel it fully.
The second thing I love about the two-minute pity party is the time limit. I’ve actually tried this myself, and I’ve gotta say that two minutes isn’t always enough for me. Sometimes, I need 20 minutes—or even a whole day! And that’s okay. The point is to put a time limit on your wallowing so that you don’t allow yourself to live in that place. Feel your feelings completely—and then move on and try again.
After I shared all of this onstage, a gentleman came up to me to talk about how my keynote had resonated with him. One of the things he shared was a story from his childhood about how he learned to move on from setbacks of his own.
He told me he was a competitive soccer player growing up and that whenever his team lost, his coach would purposely talk about the next game ahead of them. He called it the “next game mentality”: Instead of focusing on the loss itself, the coach wanted everyone to focus on what they learned from it and how they could bring that knowledge and experience into the next game. The gentleman didn’t realize it then, but what his coach was doing was helping the team reframe the experience: Sure, it’s a bummer that they lost the game, but instead of ruminating on that, put your energy toward the next one.
That mindset, he told me, has stayed with him ever since, and it’s shaped how he views failure today. When something doesn't work out, he allows himself to feel everything that comes along with that, but instead of wallowing in that feeling, he asks himself, “What can I take to the next game? How can I learn and grow from this and move forward?”
I loved this perspective because it shows that resilience is a muscle you can train. If you can look at failure as an opportunity to learn, you can strengthen your resilience and bounce back more quickly after a setback. It's a different way of thinking that can help you keep up your momentum so that you can move through failure and eventually reach success.
These concepts can also apply to teams. After you experience failure together, you could throw a timed pity party where you let everyone share how they feel, and then, when the timer goes off, you agree to move forward together. Or, you could have a conversation about the next “game”: This game didn't work out, but what might the next one look like?
So now, I want to ask you: What’s your relationship with failure? What helps you move forward when you have a setback? What about this post resonated most with you? Hit “reply” and let me know. My team and I love reading your responses!
This topic is especially important when there’s so much changing in the world around us. Change requires us to evolve and try new things, and failure is naturally going to be a part of that. Here’s to giving ourselves permission to screw up, to reset, and to move forward quickly when it happens!
We’ve got this!
Big hugs,
