Dealing With Failure

In today's episode we discuss dealing with failures, or what we perceive as failure. We discuss why changing our perspective on these perceived failures can reveal them to be the tools for growth and opportunity that they really are. Also, we talk on how being afraid to fail can inhibit you from doing anything!

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the show.

Today we're talking about dealing with failure,

Right?

I think so.

Okay,

Good.

Alright,

I have a very short attention span today,

Seriously.

So this might be a failure that we have to deal with.

It could be.

Could be.

Or what somebody would deem as a failure.

Right.

So how do you usually,

What do you usually do,

What do you consider a failure?

Do you consider things failures?

Or is everything like a learning process?

Yeah,

I'd say everything.

If everything happens for a reason,

Is anything a failure?

Okay,

Thank you.

Now,

There are no failures,

And that's the end of the show.

Thanks for listening everyone.

Ben just summed up the whole show.

I have nothing to do.

Oh man.

No,

But alright.

Yeah,

Dig your way out of this one.

So obviously that's a nice blanket to put on everything,

But there's definitely things that people would perceive as failures.

So how do you deal with a perceived failure?

Change your perception.

Thank you,

That's the end of the show.

No,

The,

Well,

That's really it.

I mean,

It's really perception.

Your perception is your reality.

So,

It's,

You know,

I think the first trick is not getting sucked up into it.

You know,

The energy.

When something feels like a failure,

It's,

You know,

All that,

All the emotions,

Like generally that feeling that comes up is really a trigger for everything that's buried inside of us,

Especially from childhood.

Because I mean,

You know,

Our whole childhood,

We've been kind of disciplined and said,

No,

You can't do what you want to do.

You have to do what I tell you you have to do.

And,

You know,

It's all part of the,

Like,

Dom Miguel Ruiz and the Four Agreements talks about it as a domestication process.

So when we're children,

We just,

We're kind of free and we're happy and we do what brings us joy and then we kind of get domesticated and we get taught that,

No,

We have to do these certain things.

And during that process,

We develop a,

I'm not good enough as I am mentality.

So we've got,

You know,

Everybody's walking around with that to some degree or another and they deal with it in different ways.

But when a failure comes up,

A lot of that,

A lot of that emotion that we feel and the reason it's so intense and it can encompass us so much is because it's triggering some of,

You know,

All the stuff that we felt our entire lives of not being good enough and failing and the fear of it and,

You know,

What's going to happen.

And so,

I mean,

That's so it's kind of,

It's kind of making sure we don't get sucked into not only the energy of the moment of feeling like a failure,

But the energy of the past,

You know,

That that gets triggered when those emotions arise.

Make sense?

Yeah.

I think that it's like the,

A lot of our shows recently have been talking about like not accepting what is or like resisting things.

But I think that this is the opposite.

I think that like you,

This is going back several,

Several podcasts ago about like sitting in your like despair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sitting in it.

And that's,

That's it.

I mean,

A lot of times as soon as something goes,

How we perceive is wrong.

What we do is we try to fix it.

So it's,

You know,

Because that feeling on uncomfortability or being unsure,

We're not,

We don't know how to sit in that,

You know,

So it's,

It's like,

It's very uncomfortable.

And we think when like subconsciously we think we're never supposed to feel uncomfortable.

So,

So that's a problem with some,

When a perceived failure comes because we don't know how to fix it.

You know,

While this shouldn't have happened,

We judge it as if it shouldn't have happened.

And then we resist the fact that it did happen by saying it shouldn't have,

You know,

Which is kind of when you break it down like this,

It's kind of absurd.

Like I mean,

How can you resisting something that actually happened and saying it wasn't supposed to is kind of ridiculous.

I mean,

It did like it,

Whether you deem it as it was supposed to happen,

Or you deem it as it wasn't supposed to happen.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't change the situation.

It just,

It's just a fact.

It did.

So all the time judging whether it should have or whether it shouldn't have is just a waste of time.

Right.

And failure is,

Has a purpose.

Yeah.

Yeah,

It's a learning curve.

And you know,

Brian Reed touched on this,

You know,

When he says,

When you're walking towards your goals,

When you're walking towards something and you fall,

Or you fail,

You're failing towards it.

You're still,

Your momentum is still going in the direction of your goal.

So failure is part of the deal.

I mean,

It's,

There's nobody ever that's,

That I've ever heard of that's ever lived on this planet that has never failed.

So why do we think that there's something wrong with it?

It's like,

I mean,

It's part of the process,

You know,

I mean,

It was Abraham Lincoln that lost all kinds of elections before he became president.

Like,

You know,

That's,

That's one of the examples that has been used to teach us this mentality.

It's like,

You know,

If he just lost an election and was like,

Oh my God,

There's,

You know,

There's something wrong with this.

I shouldn't have,

I shouldn't have even gone in this direction and I quit,

I failed.

Well then he wouldn't have been president.

And that goes for absolutely everyone that's ever done anything.

Yeah,

George Washington's first battle that he was in control of was a huge failure.

It was,

Yeah.

Yeah.

What would people would deem as a failure?

Yeah.

It was like an embarrassment and led to like the French Indian war or whatever it was.

It was a huge,

Huge thing.

Yeah.

And you take every,

I mean,

Anybody that's ever played a sport.

They failed something.

Michael Jordan didn't make his high school basketball team.

Yeah.

Is that true?

I don't know.

I've heard that.

And you know,

I,

I used to believe it was true,

But I'm not sure if it is.

But anyway,

Even if he didn't,

Even if he didn't,

He missed shots.

I mean,

Missing a shot is a failure.

So if you focus on a missed shot,

You know,

The in baseball,

It's like,

You know,

The best hitters are hitting around 300.

I mean,

That's,

That means seven times out of 10,

They're not getting a hit.

I mean,

So it's also,

Uh,

That's a good,

That brings up a good analogy sports.

Oh,

Good.

The fact that you're going to fail doesn't mean you shouldn't try something because you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Wayne Gretzky.

Yeah,

So,

But,

But,

But in all seriousness,

Um,

Yeah,

It's that failure is part of the process.

And if it's like anything else,

If we look at it as a tool for learning,

Then we're going to learn from it.

We're going to grow from it.

We're going to come back stronger and better,

Which is what everyone that has succeeded has done.

Everyone who hasn't succeeded has not done that.

You know,

Do you see how simple that is?

Like seriously,

This is like,

We've just kind of broken down all of life in,

Into one thing.

Like everybody who has ever succeeded,

If you want to succeed at anything in your life,

Anything relationships,

Work,

Uh,

A passion that you have,

Absolutely anything in life,

If you want to succeed,

Then you need to look at your failures,

Learn from them,

Grow and move on.

That's that's it.

That's that's all you have to do forever.

And you will succeed if you continue walking towards that goal.

You'll succeed if you learn.

But if you,

If you're,

When you fail,

If you don't deal with it well and you just let yourself give up,

Then you don't succeed.

That's that's the main difference between success and failure.

Uh,

John Wooden.

Oh,

John Wooden is awesome.

Because you like to say Wooden said failure isn't fatal,

But failure to change might be.

Yes.

That's it.

It's and I mean,

He's one of the not,

Not only the great sports teachers,

The things that he accomplished with his teams are amazing,

Um,

And his whole philosophy on sports as well as life is amazing.

You know,

When,

When they have interviews with his past players,

One of the things that they say is that the lessons that he taught them at UCLA that are the same lessons that have served them all through life,

As well as things that they pass on to their children nowadays.

Yeah.

Um,

It's,

You know,

The persistence of doing it too,

Of,

Of continuing on knowing that you're going to fail.

Yeah,

That's,

That actually just reminded me of something like when I was,

I forgot where I heard this first book,

Somebody had a nice twist on it.

Like a lot of times when people are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives,

People say,

Well,

What would you do even if you didn't get paid for it?

Um,

Which is a good way to,

To find something that you should be doing because if you have a love for something,

That's what you should be doing.

But then I heard a twist on that and it said,

What would you do even if you knew you'd fail?

And I was like,

Ooh,

I like that.

You know,

That I connected with.

What would I do even if I knew I was going to fail?

And like for me,

I knew that I would life coach because life coaching is,

I enjoy it.

You know,

I get caught up in the moment.

I go with it.

It's you know,

I lose time when I'm doing it.

I lose track of time completely and I just enjoy it.

And I did it for free for many years before I did it professionally.

And then even now it's,

I mean,

Compare it.

I mean,

I still do it for free,

You know,

In certain situations,

But it's,

So that is something that I knew that I would do even if I failed because I just enjoy it.

You know?

Yeah.

Uh,

The,

The things that you,

You know,

Are passionate about are pretty obvious if you just take a moment to think about it and realize what it is.

Anybody should be able to answer those questions.

Yeah.

And I mean,

Themselves the time to think about it.

And a lot of times if you,

If you can't answer those questions,

You can ask people around you because a lot of times people around you know better than you do.

You know,

We've got all our emotion blocking things that we probably should be able to see and,

And we've talked ourselves out of things that we should be doing.

So they're no longer on a table.

But if you ask people,

You know,

What am I good at?

What am I just naturally good at?

The people who know you,

A lot of times they'll,

They'll come up with,

You know,

With some incredible,

Fine tuned specific things that you're good at.

I mean,

I've asked people that in the past and what I got back wasn't the term life coaching.

I got back things like things more specific than life coaching.

They're within life coaching,

But they're more even more specific,

You know,

Which,

Which is cool.

You know,

I think I got things like being able to get to the heart of the matter very quickly,

You know,

To cut through all the,

The smoke and mirrors and just really find the point.

It's something I do well,

You know,

That's other people saw in me,

Which was cool to hear.

I kind of thought I was like that too,

But you know,

It's when it's in my head,

It's just kind of something.

Yeah.

I think I kind of do that well.

And then also in other people like,

Oh no,

This is,

This is definitely you,

You do that.

And it's like,

Oh,

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you definitely shut that part of your brain off that acknowledges what you are good at.

Yes.

Yeah.

Especially if you're,

You know,

In a situation where you're lost and looking for something,

Right?

You,

For some reason you're making yourself even harder to figure it out because you're resisting.

You're resisting what those you're resisting and you're looking at your past failures and thinking that there was something wrong with them instead of them as learning curves.

Right.

You know,

It's,

It's the,

For me,

It's,

I think,

I think relationships are the final frontier of,

Of personal growth because it's,

You know,

It's,

I mean,

Everything you need to,

You need to first learn about yourself and grow and implement it in,

Into situations and stuff.

And when you can get through,

When you can really implement healthy life in relationships with other people,

That's,

That's important and romantic relationships even more,

Or at least it's been that way in my situation.

So when I've,

When a relationship has finished for me,

It's,

I mean,

Of course I have the natural inclination to want to say that to feel failure and that the relationship failed and all this stuff,

But I fight that and I just put my attention towards what do I need to learn out of this because that's more important to me.

You know,

Like maybe like I'll,

When I understand that when you're caught up in that mentality,

Sometimes it's hard to talk yourself out of it.

So I would just remove the subject from the table.

Like I wouldn't,

I wouldn't allow myself to think of it.

So instead of proving to myself that I didn't fail,

I would say to myself,

If I was caught up in it,

Okay,

Well maybe I did fail.

Maybe it's all my fault.

Maybe you know,

Maybe it's a,

Maybe it's a complete failure,

But that's not what I'm focused on right now.

Because that is not going to get me anywhere.

What's going to get me anywhere is by learning from the experience.

So what can I learn so I don't have to go through this pain again?

Because I didn't like going through that,

That pain of that failed relationship.

So then I turned my focus on what I can learn and then what I learn gets me excited for the future.

You know,

Because I look at,

I look at all the things I've learned from relationships and then I look forward to a relationship in the future and I go,

Oh my God,

That's like,

The person that I attract and click with at the stage of life that I'm at now is going to be awesome.

They're going to be phenomenal because I've learned so much.

I've learned so much.

I'm going to be so capable of being in a healthy relationship.

It's going to be awesome.

You know,

It's like the,

No,

It's funny is I was,

This came up,

I was talking to my parents I think last week or something and you know,

Parents worry about you.

So they're asking about all different areas of my life.

How's this going?

How's that going?

How's this?

And they always ask about my social life because they know that I'm pretty busy with work and my son and my social life isn't that large.

So they always ask about that.

And I said,

Yeah,

I,

You know,

I just told them that I wasn't seeing anybody at the moment I think.

And there,

And my mom was like,

Oh,

You know,

You,

You need to start seeing somebody or maybe I was going to coffee and she was like,

Go good because you need to start seeing somebody,

Whatever it was.

She was like,

You know,

You need to start seeing somebody.

And I'm like,

Well,

I started laughing.

I started laughing when she said it.

And then,

And she said,

She goes,

Well,

You know,

Your son's going to grow up and,

And you're going to be alone.

And then I just burst it out laughing because that was just hilarious to me.

I mean,

That's the last thing on my mind.

I'm not,

I don't have fear that I'm going to be alone.

Like it was literally,

I mean,

I had to pull the phone away because I was laughing so hard.

I mean,

That really got me going because it's just,

It's funny.

The different perceptions that we have,

You know,

I mean,

It's,

She's been married her whole life,

So it's like,

That's,

That's kind of how she perceives the situation.

So but me,

I'm not,

I wasn't worried about it.

You know,

I was,

It was,

It was comical to me that somebody was worried about that,

But because when I think about relationships,

I'm excited.

The only thing I feel is excitement for the future.

Yeah.

Right then?

Yeah.

Okay.

Did you see,

That was a good catch,

Wasn't it?

That was a good catch.

Yeah.

I did stream the microphone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I caught it.

Yeah.

Just lift it up a little.

Should be fine.

There you go.

There.

I think I got it.

Okay,

Cool.

Um,

So,

Uh,

Pulling back the curtain,

Um,

I can see the wheels turning.

I was trying to,

I was,

I was so into your story about finding someone,

Your mom tried to set you up with somebody.

Also,

Just by the way,

Ladies,

If you're,

If you're interested,

Contact information will be given at the end of the show.

Yeah,

That's what I need.

All right,

Careful.

Careful with that.

I'm kidding,

Of course.

But no,

It's,

I think it's because I did so much work on relationships.

I focused so much on that and I felt that I grew so much on that,

That through my growth,

The confidence came.

So now I just sit in confidence that,

You know,

That I'm going to be in a wonderful relationship and it's,

It's going to be amazing.

And the person that I've become because of the work that I've done is going to be capable of being in something that's really healthy and happy for long term.

So it's,

So I'm kind of so wrapped up in the excitement and the joy of that,

That when somebody comes in and tries to bring fear in because of their own fear for me,

You know,

I mean,

That's kind of what parents do.

They want the best for their kids so that fear can bleed over,

You know,

So when somebody comes in,

I just literally found it so laughable that somebody would have fear like that for me,

You know?

It was just so out of my realm of mentality.

But like I said,

I think that that's because it's the,

The,

All the work that I did.

Yeah.

And in doing the work,

You,

You remove the,

The fear of failure.

So changing gears a little bit,

But I think it's going to go right back to the same things that we've talked about.

Probably not the best way to intro a new segment.

What about failures in making healthy choices,

Failures in dieting,

Failures in getting into an exercise routine,

You know,

People that,

That make an effort,

Then they fall back on it and then they get hard on themselves and they don't think they don't want to try again because that didn't work.

I've tried that.

I've tried all the diets.

I've tried going to the gym.

I tried getting a personal trainer and I quit.

Yeah.

You know,

I failed.

Well,

And that's it.

So what is?

It's,

They look at,

They look at it as a failure.

So if you failed at something,

Then you can't do it.

It's like,

No,

It's,

You know,

Back to all the examples and sports and politics and everything else.

It's everybody has failed on their way to achieving whatever they've achieved,

But they refuse to look at that,

You know?

So it's,

And the other thing is learning,

You know,

Learn from it,

Learn from what you,

You did wrong,

Learn from,

You know,

From the things that made you fail.

And then if you,

If you take the time to look back and learn from your failures,

Then what you're going to be is a different person because of those lessons.

You're going to be more capable.

You're going to have more knowledge and you're going to be able to accomplish things that you weren't previously able to accomplish.

That's everything is like that.

I mean,

If you,

If you take a kid in first grade and say,

Hey,

Do,

You know,

I don't know what grade they,

They learned math,

But you know,

Hey,

Do some division in first grade and the kid fails at it.

Now,

So then all of a sudden in fourth grade when he's supposed to be learning division because he's learned everything that preceded that and got to that point,

Should he just go,

Well,

No,

I can't do division.

I tried it three years ago and it didn't work.

So I'm incapable of that.

Of course not.

You know,

He's a different person where she's a different person.

It's a different child.

They grew,

They learned from their experiences and they've gotten to a point where they could accomplish things that they couldn't previously accomplish.

That's the whole point of life,

You know?

And the other piece of that,

Especially with the,

With the diet and stuff is,

Is generally people fail when things are like on that type of stuff in their personal lives.

When,

When the,

When the piece is too big,

When they're trying to accomplish something too big,

You know,

If they say,

Well,

I'm going to go to the gym five days a week and then they fail.

Well,

Well,

That's because going to the gym five days a week was too big,

You know?

Well,

I'm going to go three times.

No,

That didn't work.

I'm going to go once.

No,

That didn't work.

Okay.

Well,

I'm going to put my gym clothes in the car.

Well,

No,

I'm going to put my gym clothes in a bag in my bedroom.

I'm just going to take the clothes and put them in a bag.

Oh,

I did that.

Oh,

Okay.

There's a success.

Okay.

So you succeeded.

Now what's the next step?

So I mean,

A lot of times people take too big of a bite and that's why they fail or they never start as something.

So it keeps shrinking it down,

Shrinking it down and that into something that you can manage where you are.

And then you've got a success and then feed off of that success.

So I have a couple of quotes.

Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.

Yeah.

And that just reminds me of something I was listening to yesterday.

It's Coco Chanel,

By the way.

Coco Chanel.

I was listening to somebody talking on one of the Super Soul sessions and they said something about,

It was a really cool quote,

But they said something about the,

Once you make a commitment to something,

Then the whole universe conspires for you.

Because once you make a commitment to do something,

When you really commit that you're going to do it,

And commitment means I'm going to do it even if I stumble along the way,

Even if there are failures along the way,

I'm not going to fail in the end result.

I'm doing this.

This is,

I'm committed.

I'm doing it.

Period.

When that type of commitment is made,

Then you can kind of keep your eyes on the prize and you just keep stumbling forward through your failures.

And when they happen,

You don't let them deter you.

I love,

There are two Winston Churchill quotes.

Success is not final.

Failure is not fatal.

It is the courage to continue that counts.

And success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Yeah.

That's,

And that's exactly what we've been talking about.

You know,

It's,

It's the,

We're our own worst enemies.

So if it's like you had mentioned earlier,

Like if you fail at a diet or something and you beat yourself up over it,

It's a waste of time and it's a waste of energy and it keeps you down.

It doesn't do anything to help you.

Anything.

It's,

You know,

I guess if we had to bring failure down to kind of one core principle,

I would think of non-judgment.

Stop judging,

You know,

As a failure to begin with.

I mean,

Stop judging yourself for not doing something right.

Just if we don't judge it as good or bad and we just judge it as is,

It's like,

Oh,

Well that didn't work out.

Okay.

That didn't work out.

Well,

Am I going to beat myself up over it?

No,

Because it doesn't get me anywhere and it holds me back and it makes me not want to keep moving forward.

Okay.

Well,

That's not beneficial.

So there's no sense in it.

Can I,

Can I label it as good?

Well,

Probably not because it didn't feel that good when I failed.

So to label it as good,

I'd probably just be trying to lie to myself.

So what if I just don't label it at all and just say,

This happened,

It just happened.

This is something that happened on my way to where I'm going.

So here I am,

This is where I am.

Now what?

What can I do from here?

Where I'm standing right now,

What's my next step now?

And then you take that step.

And if you just continue doing that,

Then you succeed.

That was beautifully said.

Thank you,

Ben.

I have two more things.

One is the most famous one that I can think of.

And it's about perspective.

I have not failed.

I've just found 10,

000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Edison.

Yeah.

And this one doesn't actually have the word failure in it,

But it's very fitting.

Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Jack Hanfield.

Chicken soup for the soul man.

Yeah,

He's got some great quotes and he's got a lot of success too.

He speaks of it from a place of success.

And I'm sure he's had many failures along the way.

Actually he did.

He went to,

I want to say 140 publishers and got turned down for his chicken soup of the soul before,

I think it was 140,

But it was a lot before he got a deal for that book.

And then,

I mean,

Look what it's turned into.

It's incredible.

So if failing at something stopped people,

We would have nothing.

We would have no nothing.

We wouldn't have any inventions.

We wouldn't have any people in politics.

We wouldn't have anybody in sports.

We wouldn't have anything.

So if you fail at something,

It's just a stepping stone the way you're going.

So where can people find you?

They can find me at life-enhancement-services.

Com.

So thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to you soon.

Reviews

Always insightfully enjoyable! Perfect timing with the content as I’ve just entered the dating field so the information was humorously helpful🙃🙏☮️

Encouraging. Thank you.

Hey Glen🌸Been listening to your podcast for 2 years now. I always come back to it when I need a Healthy perspective on things. Just wanted to say that your words have helped me alot and I am so thankfull that you decided to make your podcast. Your thoughts are a gift to the world❤️🌎Thank you for sharing them with us🤗

Really useful reminders, especially at the moment... thanks Glenn 💜 x

Thank you. I needed some encouragement. My takeaway: failure is a judgment. I'm so careful not to judge things as good or bad but now I realize I'm judging myself at where I'm at.

I like the simplicity of these two guys chatting - it’s a refreshing break from the

Good talk fellas

I have to say that this is one of the best talks I’ve listened to! 👍🏾

Very interesting, thank you 🙏

This was perfect - just what I needed right now. Thank you.

Powerful, practical insight and suggestions. Thank you!

Lots to appreciate here

Right on! Thank you ✨✨✨