Failure Judo: Reframe the Experience

07/25/2020

Many times the fear or shame of failure is worse than the failure itself.  By reframing the experience, we can sometimes reduce the fear of failure beforehand.  Applied after the fact, reframing can help us focus on deriving maximum benefit from a shameful or embarrassing failure.  This shift in mindset hinges on our ability to look at an experience not as a do-or-die opportunity to prove our worth, but rather a learning opportunity, or change to stretch ourselves.  If we examine our lives closely, there are many more opportunities to learn than there are truly critical situations in which our future depends on our success.  It’s true — not everything can be a learning opportunity.  But we can learn to shift our mindset away from the “everything is critical” view that naturally comes to many of us, allowing ourselves the freedom and space to learn and grow through our experiences and especially our failures.