From the course: Confidence-Building Strategies for Work and Life

Understanding your perceptions of failure

From the course: Confidence-Building Strategies for Work and Life

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Understanding your perceptions of failure

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- Growing up, my auntie ran a dance school, which meant that I was performing on stages from as young as I can remember. This taught me many invaluable lessons, though the most important was how to become very comfortable with failure, or what many might perceive as failure. Whilst I absolutely loved dancing, I was actually quite bad at it. I was inflexible, clumsy, I could never remember the steps and I never did quite manage to nail natural grace. I would enter competitions and never win. I remember one time in particular, entering a competition and sitting in the audience, waiting my turn with shaking hands. I got up to perform. And then at the end, the judges held up a series of rating numbers. I watched as they lifted zero, zero, zero. You might be wondering why, given I possess zero natural ability, that I persisted. The answer is simple, I enjoyed it. At that young age, I saw quite clearly that the value of experiences comes not simply from how well we do them, but also whether we enjoy them. When I became a professional speaker, this idea cemented even more. Every single time I would deliver a speech at a conference and receive negative feedback, these were the moments when I would hone my craft. I started to connect the dots that I became better with every single failure. As a result, when mistakes happen, I use them as a moment to take my lessons and then move on. I want to invite you to think about how you respond when I share this idea. Is it something you agree with? Or are you thinking it sounds kind of silly and idealistic? Is it something you'd like to believe, but struggle to in practice? It's all valid. Research has shown that those of us who are more compassionate towards ourselves during moments of failure are more likely to hit our goals. And when you think about it, this makes sense. When we don't make the stakes so high, we can move through difficult experiences more quickly. When we give ourselves room to mess things up, we don't give up during those inevitable moments when we do. So now I want you to answer the following question for me. How do I treat myself when I feel I have made a mistake? Take stock of your answer. Do you perceive mistakes to be a dead end? Do you find the thought of potential failure humiliating? Do you insult yourself? Because you know what? If we don't allow ourselves to fail then we don't allow ourselves to learn.

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