Dealing With Failure

Failure happens way more than success. How we see ourselves can be the difference in whether we learn from the failure or give up completely.

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Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Welcome to the Recapture YourLife podcast with Steve Crenshaw.
Welcome back.
This week we're going to talk aboutfailure and how our mind perceives it.
Most people either don't believe theywill have a failure in their life,

(00:29):
or they just deny completely that theycan fail at something they're trying to
accomplish. Failure's commonplace.I mean, let's be honest about it.
Failure happens way more than success.
What we do is we see peoplewho have success then develop a mindset that success
is the norm. When it's not.
We judge our insides by someone else'soutsides and assume that all we have

(00:53):
to do is show up and we'll be successful.
What I want us to see isthat failure is inevitable,
but with the right mindset,recovery is also possible.
Every great success came from failures.
People who rebuilt after their failureslook at all the corporations now that

(01:13):
have closed over just the last year orfranchises that went out of business.
A failure is not the end of theroad in the grand scheme of things.
It's just a setback if youhave the right perspective.
How we perceive the setback determineshow we're going to recover from it and
how we approach our nextopportunity. At some point in time,

(01:35):
everyone's going to fail.
The problem starts when we lookat failure as the end of the road.
Let's be real. Marriagesfail. Businesses fail.
Books don't get published. Weightcomes back and jobs get lost.
These things happen, but none ofthem have to be the end of the road.
So what are some ways that we can lookat a perceived failure differently?

(01:59):
Number one is change the wayyou think and act about it.
Michael Bent is the most decoratedamateur boxer in American history to
never go to the Olympics. Michaelalso never wanted to be a boxer,
and in his career,
Michael had a habit of overreacting.His parents were Jamaican,
so he could have gone andfought for the Jamaican team,

(02:22):
but he refused to give uphis US citizenship to fight for the Jamaican team.
He could have gone for the US team, buthe was only going to be an alternate,
so he refused to go with them as well.
So Michael turned pro and helost his first professional fight
by being knocked out in the first round.
So he did what anyreasonable person would do.

(02:44):
He walked away fromboxing for over 20 months,
but after his hiatus,
he came back to become a VanderHolyfield sparring partner,
and while he was sparring with a Vander,
he got picked up by a newpromoter and after just 10 fights,
Michael was challenging for theheavyweight championship of the world.

(03:07):
That's actually a stretch. He wassupposed to be a warmup fight,
but he won knocking out TommyMorrison in the first round.
Then another strange turn ofevents happened in Michael's life.
The first time he wentup to defend his title,
he was beaten so badly thathe had to go to the hospital.
The doctors told him he could neverfight again or he would suffer permanent

(03:31):
brain damage. Sounds like a failure to me.
After some inner contemplation, Michaelknew all along he never wanted to fight.
That was his father's dream, and heused Michael to fulfill his dream.
Michael started taking classes in writingand was asked to write an article for
a magazine about his experience ofbeing knocked out. From that article,

(03:54):
other opportunities began to come.
He became a boxing coach for moviesand then became an actor and a
director. He's appeared in several movies.
Michael had outstanding successand huge public failure.
I mean, for a boxer, getting knockedout is the worst failure of all,

(04:16):
especially when you're the world champion.What he learned through the
experience was that failurewas not the end of the road.
He learned to look at himself differentlyand realized he was more than a
fighter. So how do you viewyour successes in failures?
Do you only see the times that youfailed or do you also see the times you

(04:38):
pulled it out at the end?
Do you look for someone to blameor do you look for why it happened?
A shift in your mindset is key toseeing yourself in a better light.
I know affirmations havegotten a bad rap over time,
but I'm not talking aboutStuart Smalley affirmations.

(04:58):
I'm smart enough, I'm good enoughand doggone it, people like me.
What I'm talking about is realself-talk what you say to yourself
in an article on the website,psych Central titled,
do Positive AffirmationsWork. It says this,
positive affirmations are a self-helpmethod to build self-confidence and

(05:20):
attract good things to your life.They are simple statements that shift your
mindset from negativity andself-criticism to positivity and focusing
on your strengths.
These statements canencourage and motivate you to develop skills and learn new
things and live a healthier life.
They can also help you overcomeself-doubt, fear, and self-sabotage,

(05:44):
and help you see the positive sideof life, but do affirmations work?
They can, but they won'tmake things magically occur.
It involves shifting yourmindset and working to goals.
How do you talk to yourself? Whatdo you say about your future?
How you see yourself has a lot todo with how you talk to yourself.

(06:09):
Saying better things can help you feelbetter about yourself and about what's
going on. Let me step backfor a minute. For some people,
a negative self-imageis a generational scar.
If you can't get overseeingyourself as a failure,
seeking help is an option. If you seeyourself as a failure and not as a

(06:30):
person who has failed,
talking to a counselor can help youwork through a negative self-image.
None of us are abject failures.
We all have different circumstances anddifferent things that have happened in
our lives.
A good counselor can help you walk throughyour perceived failures and see them
in a different light.You are not a failure.

(06:51):
You are just a human beingwho has had things happen.
Don't take failure personally.
This can be the biggest turning point inwhether you succeed or fail in whatever
area you're reaching for.
So when you push the rewind button onyour life and look at all the things
you've accomplished, do you seeyourself as a success or a failure?

(07:12):
If you see yourself as just a failure,
please take time and find a goodcounselor and get that off of your heart.
Alright, that's my soapbox moving forward.
Number two is we got to learnto survive in the messy middle.
Success has to be worked for the messymiddle is the part where life happens.
If you're writing a book or making a filmand you've got a beginning and you've

(07:35):
got an end, but you'vealso got to get there,
the messy middle is where weconnect the dash on our headstones.
We live life in the messy middle,
and if we want to besuccessful at whatever we do,
we have to learn to push throughto get the results we want.
This is why we quit going tothe gym, why we quit dieting,

(07:56):
and why we stop writing thebook we've planned for years.
It's also why the book gets writtenmostly and then stopped and never
published.
Life is life and it has to be lived.There are no shortcuts and no simple
solutions. We have to put in theeffort when the excitement is gone.

(08:16):
That's where great success comes from.
Practice and sticking around or what willget the book finished and the podcast
more listens.
It gets the script written andpays dividends for your self worth.
I have a friend who wrote a book 20years ago and a small publisher published
it, but since then, he's written severalmore books and numerous screenplays,

(08:40):
but none of them werepicked up until recently.
He's now working with a bigger publisherand it's getting his original book
republished by them. Now thatis working in the messy middle.
He never stopped believing and reachingout and trying to get his in the door,
and it finally paid off.Go back to Michael Bent.
Michael's life was split in two parts.

(09:02):
The part where he was a fighterthat he hated to begin with,
but became good at it,
and the part after the perceived failurewhere he's found most of the success in
his life. The second half is where hefeels at home and where he is living,
the life he designed, but the thingis, both halves had to be worked for.
Nothing ever came easy. Michaelhad to train to be a fighter.

(09:25):
Michael had to go backto school to be an actor.
If you want to be successful in life,
find something you love to doand learn to do it so well,
people will pay you for it.
This is the part where many people gettripped up because they may start out
doing something and as they progress,they don't want to do the work.
There's a reason we say practice makesperfect because practice makes us better

(09:49):
at whatever we do. Even ifyou start a job at McDonald's,
you can't be the manager on thefirst day, and I know some people,
including myself, that thinkthey ought to be the manager,
but what we have to do is learn towork and learn the skills needed to be
successful at whatever we choose.Time takes time.
We can't just jump in andfinish something today.

(10:12):
We have to work for it and learning towork through the messy middle is where
success comes from. Numberthree, learn from the failure.
Since we established early onthat we're all going to fail,
we might as well learn from it when we do.
This has a lot to do with what I wastalking about in the messy middle.
Look at James Dyson ofDyson vacuum cleaners.

(10:32):
He tried over 5,000 differentmodels before he got his vacuum cleaner that would
hold a suction even whenthe filter was dirty.
Or Thomas Edison who had a thousanddifferent light bulb prototypes before he
found one that would stay lit longenough to make it viable for home use.
George Washington Carver came up withover 300 different uses for peanuts.

(10:55):
It's a peanut who would ever think totry 300 different things with peanuts,
and no, he didn't inventthe best use of peanuts,
which is peanut butter.You get my point.
A lot of times when we talk about peoplewho are inventors or have done well,
we don't see the failure, and when wedo see the failure, we go, oh, well,
that's Thomas Edison. That's GeorgeWashington Carver. That's good for them,

(11:18):
but not for me. That's not true.They're just people. They're normal,
average, everyday people who just triedsomething different. Johnny Cash said,
you build on failure. Youuse it as a stepping stone.
Close the door on the past. Youdon't try to forget the mistakes,
but you don't dwell on them.
You don't let it have any of your energyor any of your time or any of your

(11:41):
space. Failure isn't the end.
There's always something we can learnor there's another way to try it or
something else we can do.
The only failure is when we quit anddon't try again. Here's some things you
can do, some questions you canask. Try to reframe the failure.
Look at it as a learningexperience. You can ask,

(12:03):
how can we look at thisfrom a different way?
Then figure out what actually happened.
Is it even a failure or can you pickup where you left off and keep going?
Number two, look at each failure asgrowth. How can I grow from this?
What can I learn? What can I bringfrom this to help me the next time?

(12:25):
Finally, don't blame others for thefailure. Look at your part in it,
then move on from it. It's part of life.
We don't have to blame anyonefor what happens. Okay,
that's all for this week. Thanks forlistening. If you like what you hear,
please remember to subscribe andshare this with your friends.
If you want to stay up to date with allthat's happening at Recapture Your Life,

(12:48):
you can sign up on thewebsite, recapture Your Life,
and we're also offeringcomplimentary coaching sessions,
and you can sign up through thewebsite. Thanks for listening.
I'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.