#080: How to Fail Better

Leaders are achievers. But nobody bats 1.000. We all experience failure eventually. That can be discouraging—even humiliating! That’s why most of us react in one of two ways. Either we globalize our failure by thinking we won’t ever succeed. Or we sweep the loss away quickly and forget it. 

But what if there was a better way to fail? 

Failure doesn’t have to be fatal, and it should never be ignored. We know because we’ve been there! 

Your failures can make you a better leader if you take the time to examine them non-defensively, learn some lessons, and then move on with confidence. Based on years of business experience, including our share of ups and downs, we’ve identified six specific actions you can take to get every bit of value you can from an experience—even failure. 

Here’s a preview of this episode:

• The most recent failure we experienced, and what we learned from it.
• The obvious—and difficult—first step in learning from failure. 
• How ignoring your own failure undermines your confidence.  
• How avoiding full responsibility for your failure compounds the effect. 
• The most empowering action you can take after a failure. 
• Healthy ways to mourn a failure.
• The downside of “staying strong” all the time. 
• Six questions that help you learn from failure.
• The “KISS” method for processing an experience (it’s not what you think). 
• The most important trait you need in order to avoid repeating a failure.
• The surprising and beneficial result of taking time to process failure.
• That day Michael literally got back up on the horse!
• How to keep failure from making your fearful in the future. 
• The reason you can actually be grateful for a failure.

Now that you know how to profit from failure, try this: apply these six steps to your most recent experience of failure. We’re betting that’ll help you avoid being stuck in the past, and gain the wisdom you need to achieve even greater things in the future. Give it a try!

TEXT A FRIEND

If this episode strikes home with you,  why not text the link to a friend? Failure is a universal experience, and someone you know could probably benefit from this content. 

While you’re at it, we’d love to hear from you too. Would you leave a review on iTunes? Good, bad, or indifferent. We’d love to hear what you think. We read all of your comments, and they really do help us make the show better! Thanks so much. 

Resources from This Episode

• “How to Recover When You Blow It Big Time” by Michael Hyatt (https://michaelhyatt.com/brene-brown-rising-strong/)
• “Why No Failure Is Truly Permanent” by Michael Hyatt (https://michaelhyatt.com/no-failure-permanent/)