Failures are an important part of your personal growth and here is WHY.

Society doesn’t tell us to document our failures. Our community doesn’t tell us to share our mistakes, our lows, or our insecurities. Nonetheless – we all go through ups and downs in life, and both experiences are part of our personal growth journey.

I know that feeling of guilt and shame when you put all your effort on something that turned out to be a complete failure. Failing exams, failing in friendship, love relationships, in business…the emotion is so strong you’d wish to stay in bed all day with little or no contact with the external world that could remind you of how badly you failed.

These failure experiences intensify our limiting thoughts about ourselves. “I am not good enough,” “I will never achieve X,” “I will not become successful…” “I am not worthy of…” “Everything I do is a mess…” are constantly on our mind and shape our self-belief. Our experiences create thoughts and our thoughts always come with an emotional attachment. In this case, our thoughts are creating fear. We fear to commit another mistake, to fail again, to let someone down again, to feel ridiculous, unworthy, and incapable of…therefore we rather avoid trying again and sit back.

Do you rather watch your dreams pass by or stand up one more time and try again? (ask yourself!)

If there is one thing I have learned (and keep very present in my mind) is that failure should be seen as something positive. And, if you check the storylines of all those successful people you look up to, you’ll see the countless times they failed before they actually succeeded. Their positive mindset and hopes allowed helped them achieve greatness.

Below I give a few ways you can see failure in a more positive way. With a change in perspective and mindset you can regain strength and courage to keep going regardless of all the failures, challenges, and obstacles;

1. Failing means you have one more chance to try again. Go over from A-Z everything you did on the first try. Identify where you might have made a mistake and think about how you could do things differently this time. Then, TRY again.
2. Failing means you are learning. When you do something wrong you can always learn from it. Next time you try again, you will do it a bit better.
3. Failing can help you work on your creative side. When you have a clear purpose, but your strategy hasn’t worked, you can always look for new ways to make it work.
4. Accepting the fact that you have failed, understanding why, and making sure you will stand up and try again is the best practice you could do to grow and strengthen yourself as a person. Keeping an open and growth mindset is key for personal development.
5. Failing keeps the excitement live! How boring would it be if you succeeded in everything on the first go? No challenge, no risk, nothing to improve on? That will cause BOREDOM!
6. Failing continuously in the same thing (relationships, career, business) means that there is something you have to change! Either your habits, your mindset, the language you use to speak to yourself or with others, your management skills, etc…Failing can help you realize and become aware of what is not working well in your life. Use the experience to modify the unhealthy sequences!

There are many ways to look at failure. I’d like to encourage you to see it as something good for your growth. Don’t let it drain you or your dreams. If you have a goal and purpose in life, no matter how hard you see it actually happening, set your mindset to growth and keep trying! Every failure will take you a step closer to success!

I want to end this post with a personal story on how I was about to QUIT my online coaching and everything I had been working on so hard these past years. I had everything prepared and organized for the live workshop. The platform where I was going to Live stream (I double checked sound and everything was working well), I checked that everyone who subscribed for the training had a reminder email and knew when to hop on, I also checked that the link where I was sharing a PDF was working well and the link to purchase a course I created was also working correctly. To my surprise, the payment link to the course wasn’t working (objective failed). Not only that, but I also blacked out in the middle of the live stream! (GOSH — worst feeling ever!)

This made my self-esteem and confidence touch bottom floor. I felt like I let everyone watching and willing to learn from this workshop, down. I felt very ashamed and not prepared for this job. For the next few months, I decided to go invisible. NO more online presence as I feared what other’s might be thinking of me now. I thought I had no more credibility or the skills to teach and support someone else. All my dreams and vision were crashed.

Well — The story changed when I realized that the problem was my mindset. I visualized myself in a few years from now and all I could see was what I was already working on. My vision of becoming a speaker and being able to impact others around the globe is what lights a fire in me! So, I tried again after going over my past mistakes, and made it happen to a successful session with amazing students who are now 1:1 clients!! From there onwards I started going live on videos again, posting more valuable content on social media, interacting with others fearlessly, and now even speaking at events and workshops!

This said...there is nothing worse than you blocking your own journey! So don’t let that happen!