Never a failure, Always a Lesson

How many times have you had the same lousy situation happen to you? You know, the same crappy job after job, “failed” relationships, money problems.

What would you say if I told you there were no failures in life? You would probably rattle off to me a list of all the failures you had in your lifetime, right? Let me let in you on a secret that will change your life.

Many times my clients come to me and tell me they are afraid to shoot for higher goals because they are afraid to fail. This keeps them stuck in their current situation because they know they will fail. They always do.

I tell people the secret that there are never failures, only lessons to be learned. If we try something new or out of our comfort zone and it doesn’t go as planned, so what? Don’t look at it as a failure, but a lesson. What lesson did you need to learn so the next time you try it, you’ll do it differently?

When we have repeated “failures” in the same situation it is because we haven’t learned the lesson yet. It will keep happening to us until we do.

One of my clients kept having terrible job experiences. Every job he had, he had problems with his boss. Sine he was the common denominator in all the situations, I asked him if he would be willing to take a look at himself. We can only change ourselves anyway, right? I asked him what he possibly might need to change in order for the job to improve? I told him that lessons keep showing up in our lives until we learn them. So what lesson could he need to get from all his angst-ridden jobs? At our next coaching call he said he thought he needed to slow down and be more detail oriented in his work. In all of his jobs he felt rushed to get them done, but they were usually done incorrectly with many mistakes. He said this was the root of most of his job issues, now that he thought of it.

Now that he knew the lesson, I asked him what the first step would be to apply it. He said to slow down, look over his work and have pride in a job well done. Instead of my client thinking he just had bad luck with bosses, or even worse, that he was simply a failure in his job, thinking of it as a lesson took all the pressure off of him, gave him control to change it and allowed him to get “unstuck” and move forward.

What lessons keep showing up for you? What would your life look like if you weren’t afraid of failure? How different would it be if there were only lessons, never failure?