Failure is what you make of it! For some, it’s a cue to abandon goals, dwell on negative feelings, and get stuck in suspended animation. For others, it’s an amazing catalyst for growth. In today’s episode we’re going to reframe how we think about and transform failure. I’ll share why I believe that there is no failure, only feedback…and my process for transforming mishaps into lessons, gratitude, and forward-moving decisions.

Read transcript below:

Steve Napolitan: Welcome to More Business More Life daily. And today we’re going to talk about failure. What is it? Is it real? Does it happen to us? Let’s talk more.

So what is failure? Many of my teachers have brought this up that there isn’t any failure, there’s only feedback. Right? I truly believe that because failure, to me, would be only if we stop. Right? If you stop and declare failure, then it’s the end. Any other time in our life, which is pretty much all the time, we have things that happen in our life. And then we decide did we like that or did we not, and then we should be making a new decision. And a lot of times, we’ll talk more about this later or maybe on another episode, but we get stuck in not doing things because we don’t take the next decision or we dwell on the failure or, “I failed,” right? And then we start building up this mindset.

But if you were able to, as I think very directly Carl Buchheit says, “There’s no failure. There’s only feedback.” And if you actually turn all information coming, and that’s why gratitude is so important to me, appreciate all results, no matter what’s happening in the world or in our lives, then if you can find the gratitude and find the learning. Because also what we say, one of our core values is growth, that all of life is learning. And if we take this presupposition into our life and presuppose that this is true, and this is what I believe, and you can choose what you want to believe, again, life is all about choices, then you can actually have what you would want. And it’s all just incremental.

So you do something or something comes into your life, then you choose, “Do I like this or do I not? What can I learn from it?” And then you’re going to make a new decision. And if it’s something that doesn’t feel good or doesn’t work well in your life, then you’re going to say, “I don’t want that, so then I’m going to choose something else.” And you’re going to keep choosing something else until you find the way that works. And the more rapidly we do that, the more that we have what we want in our life because we’re just taking in the information, making a new decision, and then moving forward. And that’s why gratitude is so big. And you’re going to hear me repeat this in other episodes, and even now, because it’s so important to having the life that we want, to having the abundance we want and the life that we want. That’s why it’s the more business and more life without sacrifice.

So we find ourselves sacrificing. That’s not what we want. Right? So then in that, then we have to take in that feedback and then make a new decision. Right? And that’s why gratitude is so important to me because we make a choice, we take what we get, and then we find the gratitude in it, find the learning in it. And then, again, it’s feedback, and then we choose again. And again, the more rapid that you choose, then the quicker you’re going to get where you want.

So is there failure? Only if you believe there is. Right? It’s all about your choice. So if you turn anything happening, whether, again, if it’s something you don’t like, let’s say a failure. Let’s say you lose something. Let’s say something crashes in your business or a certain product doesn’t work the way you thought. Then immediately you could say, “Oh, I failed.” Or you can say, “Oh my gosh, look at this feedback we’re getting,” and then make a new decision. And the more that you do that, the more rapidly you do that, then the less it hurts. Sometimes things will hurt.

Do things hurt me sometimes? Do things not work out? Absolutely. Then what I do is I say, “Okay, let me take that information and then make a new decision.” And then the faster that you pivot, the faster that you make new choices, the faster you’re going to have what you want. So ultimately, that’s where this essence of failure tends to dwell, tends to get us down into a depression. Our mindset gets affected and we’re dwelling on what didn’t happen the way that we wanted instead of saying, “Okay, what did I learn from this?,” and then, “Let’s make a new decision.”

So I hope that this is helpful. I hope that you can start to turn in any mishaps or even if it’s big enough to be called a failure in your mind, then more quickly start to dissect that. What can you learn from that? What feedback can you get from that? What can you be grateful for in that situation? Make a new decision, and then keep moving forward in your life. So I hope this is helpful. Please let me know what was the biggest takeaway from this episode. Please let me know what else I can help you with. Your comments are so precious to me so that I can keep making this even better and better with our daily episodes. As always, remember, choose gratitude and create freedom. We’ll see you tomorrow.