Comfort 2 Growth

Failure seems to be one of most peoples’ worst nightmares. It can prevent you from taking a risk or cause you to submit and give up on an endeavor during a moment of adversity.

Failure comes in many forms. Getting dumped, job opportunity rejection, losing a sporting match, business failure… the list is endless.

It prevents people from pursuing romantic interests, from chasing their dreams. If you let it, it will prevent you from realizing your true potential.

A Personal Story of Overcoming Failure

I’ve been lucky. I have trained myself to take set backs and failures and use them as motivation. I will tell a brief story about a moment of failure in my life and how I leveraged it to gain momentum…

After being dumped in a past relationship I was pretty devastated. My confidence was shot. I had never really been dropped so easily, with such haste and coldness. It hurt. She left me because I was complacent and our relationship became stagnant.

The subsequent weeks I was in a rut. My game suffered dramatically. I was no longer the care-free, confident guy that could easily strike up an interesting conversation with a cute girl. I was bitter and it was almost painted on my forehead that I was looking for a rebound to sooth my ego.

I then realized that instead of being bitter and sulking around like a sad puppy, I needed to man up and build some positive momentum. I started lifting weights, going out with a mission to simply have fun instead of meeting a love interest. I focused on being happy with myself.

The effect was profound. Once I had realized to use this negative event as a reason to grow and become better, things dramatically changed. I was happier, more lively, able to attract and interest people in conversation. My energy level was higher. Life was good and I didn’t require anyone but myself for validation.

As I rode this positive wave length, my success with dating sky rocketed. I surfed this wave and eventually found someone special to settle down with. Learning from the past break up, I now know complacency kills relationships and have become a better man from it.

The moral of this story is that you can use failure as a tool. A tool to learn where you went wrong, and as a tool to motivate yourself to grow. In this case, I learned to not become complacent in relationships and used being dumped as motivation to exercise and work on my game.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Fear is neither a good or a bad thing. It is an evolutionary learning tool. The problem is that many people let fear take too much control. The trick is to recognize what your fear is protecting you from.

If your fear is only protecting your precious little ego, you are risking relatively nothing but a few moments of discomfort. Conversely, if your fear is protecting you from, say, breaking a limb or getting shot; your fear is  of serious bodily harm and justified.

We often make excuses to shelter ourselves from bruising our egos. We don’t take the chance to apply for a job because we think we are not qualified enough. Or, we don’t say hi to that little cutie at the bar or grocery store who just made eye contact with you because you are afraid you will run out of things to say.

Never allow the fear of failure to influence your decision making. One caveat: this is unless your own or others’ health and  well being hinge on the outcome.

How to Leverage Failure

Fail –> Embrace –> Recognize –> Learn/Train –> Try Again

• Fail- This is the moment where the shit hits the fan. Nothing seems to go right and you may be in a state of denial. You blame others. How can it be your fault? You’re perfect. This doesn’t happen to people like you.
• Embrace- This is the valley of the experience. You realize that what has happened has happened. That nothing is going to change the past. You come to terms with the reality that your actions influenced this particular outcome. You become OK with it. The pain is not gone, but you have embraced the pain.
• Recognize- Here you come to terms with your role in the failure. Did you not prepare enough? Did you become comfortable and complacent? What could you have done differently? The important thing in this stage is to recognize your part, but not dwell or beat yourself up over it. See it, understand it, know it.
• Learn/Train – Take your recognized role in the failure and do work to fix it. This is when you hit the weight room, read books to overcome sticking points, experiment with different methods. Practice, practice, practice and then perfect your practicing. Use whatever resources you can to gain knowledge on the subject of your goal/past failure. Caveat: Do not allow analysis by paralysis set in. Be willing to micro-fail for the benefit of experimentation and learning. I will cover this in a future post.
• Try Again- Aim for the stars and try again. Be confident in your learning and training. If you fail again, repeat the process again and again and again. If you’re finding yourself continuously failing, reevaluate your method and try a new approach. There may be a hidden sticking point. Find it and conquer it.

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I encourage everyone to fail. It pushes your comfort boundaries and leads to growth.