On getting past failures

A question that cannot be answered without first going on a journey to define what constitutes failure

A few weeks ago, my cousin asked me if I could write about how I get past failure. I’ve been thinking about that ever since he asked me the question because immediately, I knew I had a tactical answer. However, what about really getting past failure, deep, deep inside myself? Do I have an answer for how I do that? And additionally, I started to wonder how to calibrate my experience with failure: have I faced enough failure to be in a position to talk about how to overcome it?

So here goes. I’m feeling a little exposed this week as I write, so give me a shout either directly or in the comments here if anything you read particularly resonates or if you have questions or reactions. It often feels like I write into a void and I can never quite tell if I’m hitting the spot or totally off the mark, and any feedback at all from you all is really appreciated.

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I sat and thought about the noteworthy failures I’ve encountered in my life so far.

I started to distill a few themes in my responses:

• Move forward and find other opportunities that remain at my disposal in the wake of the failure

• Debrief what went wrong and understand where I was or wasn’t responsible for how things played out

• Take responsibility for the parts that were within my control and figure out what to do differently going forward; focus on that list

• Reframe away from the concept of “failure”

…how easy and clean everything sounds when you put it in a bulleted list.

Some of these steps could take years to figure out depending on the context of the specific failure. I’m not even sure that I’ve fully completed these steps with some of the failures I’ve encountered in my lifetime.

As I reflected further, I started to ask myself if this is the right list, and what are the caveats and warnings I should be including with them.

In particular, the last item on reframing away from the concept of “failure” feels like it has the potential to be highly useful and very damaging all at the same time.

Over the past couple of months, I have thought a lot about my choice to leave my job. On the good days, I think about how I had a great run, learned a lot, and stepped away at the right time in the company’s trajectory and strategic direction. On the bad days, I wonder if I failed. My brain takes me on the winding path of thinking that I left because I couldn’t add value with the new direction of the company. I wonder if I should have tried harder or had better skills and abilities to adjust to the change. I start to tell myself that I left because I wasn’t capable enough and I was going to fail in my role going forward.

It sounds kind of crazy to put it into writing. If anyone else told me this narrative, I’d look them in the eye and say something to the effect of, “You’ve gone down a rabbit hole and you’re spiraling.” I know objectively that there are plenty of things I achieved and that leaving the job wasn’t a failure.

All of this is to illustrate that at the root of it, labeling something as a failure is extremely subjective. Which brings me back to the notion of reframing away from the concept of “failure.”

Perhaps that is the answer to dealing with failure: just choose not to view it as such.

This sounds pretty great in theory. Hold your head up high, believe in yourself and your abilities, and walk through life with a bounce because you did your best and the only reason things didn’t work out was because of other factors. Channel a bit of that “white man energy” and boom – you never need to overcome failure because failure is simply something that doesn’t happen to you. The positively reinforcing cycle that’s associated with self-confidence probably kicks in. You just keep doing you, because you’re awesome.

However, in most scenarios, I am responsible for some part of the outcome, no matter how small. There’s no way that I can walk away without taking any responsibility. I steadfastly believe that in order to keep growing as a person and to push and challenge myself, there’s always something I can do better. This doesn’t mean taking responsibility for everything that didn’t go well – there are always factors out of my control and there is no point in beating myself up over those.

Let’s go back to my example about my choice to leave my job:

If I am absolutely sure that it was not a failure, I risk being overly self-assured and not reflective enough to challenge myself to grow as a professional when I go into my next job. On the other hand, I have to be crisp about what was within my control and what wasn’t – and I don’t need to take responsibility for anything that wasn’t in my hands. Taking too much responsibility for a situation that goes awry can lead pretty quickly to imposter syndrome among other unpleasant feelings.

As I have written all of this, I’ve come up with a few revised takeaways on failure.

1. Defining failure is kind of hard.
   In my example, I could see someone calling my departure from my job a failure just as much as they could call it a successful job stint. Any scenario, it seems, can be a failure or a success depending on how you frame it. Maybe then, the question I should be answering is not just how to overcome failure, but how to approach any situation that doesn’t go perfectly… Which sounds a bit like life in general. (So I’m about to tell you how to approach life – incredible! Who’d have thought I was qualified for this?)

2. Most of us could probably benefit from more aggressively reframing scenarios to be positive.
   We probably call more things “failures” than is necessary and need to give ourselves grace to say cheesy things like “This wasn’t failure – this was a learning experience” (but actually). The more we do that, the more others will perceive it the same way and it supports the positively reinforcing cycle of projecting confidence and getting others confident in us and then rising to the occasion, etc.

3. Reframe all you want, but take rightful responsibility.
   If you do #2 without #3, you will not grow. You will not challenge yourself. Do the post mortem. Figure out what went wrong or what could have been done differently within your control. You can do this without saying it was a failure or having to take responsibility for everything.

4. Keep your head up and move on forward.
   Once you’ve done the requisite reflection, don’t dwell on what’s happened. Take the lessons learned and keep going. In moments of self-doubt, you can lean on #2 a bit more and remember that it was just a “learning experience,” not a “failure.”

All of this is definitely easier said than done. I know there are still going to be days when I sit and am overcome by imposter syndrome and wonder if I’ll have to take ten steps back in my career because I have “nothing to show” for my last job. I know, rationally, that I have learned a lot and I’m capable of many different things that are valuable to any business. But on the other hand, I also sit and look at jobs and wonder if I am really qualified. And this is where I will remind myself of #4 and I will share the story of my experience framed around what I accomplished and learned.

When it comes to any situation in life that doesn’t go perfectly (not just “failure”), sometimes it’s easy to get past the self-doubt and imposter syndrome. On other days, I really do have to stop and ask myself, what would a white man do. And for me, that reminds me to not just take rightful responsibility but to also embrace some healthy situational reframing (not gaslighting).

Tl;dr

1. Defining failure is kind of hard.

2. Most of us could probably benefit from more aggressively reframing scenarios to be positive.

3. Reframe all you want, but take rightful responsibility.

4. Keep your head up and move on forward.