3 Keys to Failing Successfully (It’d Be a Shame to Waste Your Failure)

What I learned from my blog failure

Failing isn’t a pleasant experience. It’s very painful.

Fear of failure is why many people don’t even start. When it happens we do all we can to feel better. To avoid any embarrassment. We may even decide not to risk anything ever again.

But learning to fail well is the secret path to success.

I recently celebrated making Medium Partner. I wrote an article about the 5 key ideas I’d used. Then I realised this wasn’t the real reason for my success.

It was something I discovered 3 years ago.

The blog disaster

I’m told that I’m a gifted public communicator.

So in 2019 I decided to offer my 20 years of public speaking experience to others. I set up a blog to share my ideas and to promote my 1–2–1 coaching. I plannedto write weekly.

It started well. I set up a website. Gathered 100+ subscribers. Received positive feedback on my articles.

But nobody wanted individual coaching. I became discouraged. Writing turned into a big energy drain. After 12 months I faced the brutal truth. It wasn’t working. I ended the project.

I felt disheartened but also relieved. Sometimes you need to stop something you are doing. But then I uncovered a new approach to failure.

What’s so great about failure?

Many people waste their failures.

They think there are only two options when you hit a hard time.

1. Survival — get through it
2. Broken — it finishes us off

When we are struggling we focus on getting through it. We fear we won’t and it will break us.

I’ve discovered there is a 3rd way. It is possible to come out better. To become stronger, more insightful, and wiser. With the right attitude, bad things can turn out for our good.

Life is like a gym. It’s designed to put us under pressure. To strain and stretch us. Pushing us to our limit. In a gym — pain is good. Making our physical muscles stronger. If we treat life the same then incredible growth becomes possible.

This 3rd way is not easy.

But I’ve found it much more meaningful and empowering.

When I restarted writing online in 2021 I realised I had gained at least 4 treasures from my failure

• The self-belief I could write consistently. Having produced 52 articles over a year. I now had deep confidence in my persistent levels. I knew I can do it.
• When I announced the blog’s closure. I received some brutal feedback from a subscriber about my lack of emails. This instilled in me the importance of regular updates to my subscribers.
• I’d designed a website and set up MailChimp. When I launched my Substack newsletter and found it was all done for me, this gave me an amazing energy boost. Medium & Substack felt easy.
• I gained practical knowledge on blog promotion and how to persuade people to sign up. I used this experience to quickly get to 100 Medium followers.

You’ll notice my failure gains were a mix of subject-specific knowledge. And an enhanced self-perception. When we fail we discover new things about ourselves.

It’s sad but some people come out of failure worst. They are bitter rather than better. So how can you ensure that doesn’t happen to you?

Here are the 3 keys I used to avoid being ruined by failure.

3 keys to failing successfully

1. Give yourself permission to stop

There is a difference between persistence and punishment.

When it is repeatedly hard. It can be ok to stop. This sounds obvious — to stop if something isn’t working. But guilt or an unwillingness to fail can so stop us from taking that step. I see a lot of people doing things that are not working for them and yet they keep going.

You already know this but it is worth hearing it again. Every idea isn’t going to work out. Deciding in advance it is ok to fail might even help you get started. Taking the attitude ‘I’ll try this and see what happens’ can be very freeing.

When I set up my website I committed to writing a new blog post every week. I promised myself I would keep going for a year and then do a full review.

This was an accidental stroke of genius.

This promise did three things for me:

1. it kept me going through the year when it started to get tough
2. it stopped me judging success/failure too soon. It gave me a lot of space to try it and see what happened
3. it gave me the freedom to shut it down because I had a preplanned n honest review

Stopping something that is failing can free up energy, time, and money to use elsewhere.

Give yourself that permission even before you start.

2. Hunt for the gold in the crap

We get more of what we pay attention to.

So when things go wrong. If we blame others. Think how terrible we are for failing. We will get more of that. More bitterness. More pain. More anger.

We need to let that go and look for the good stuff.

Some treasures can only come from failure. It would be a shame to go through all that without the reward.

Spend time pondering:

• What have I learned?
• What would I do differently?
• How have I grown?
• In what ways am I stronger?
• What insights do I now have?

Refuse to beat yourself up and focus on the gains

3. There’s knowing and there’s knowing

Learning from experience is deeper.

Some would say experience is the only real teacher. You can get ideas from books and courses. But until is it tested in the forge of life. It isn’t real.

Some of your gains from the previous section. Will be things you already ‘knew’ in your head. Don’t discount the value of knowing them on a deeper level.

Take my brutal feedback, That I needed to send more emails to my subscriber. I would already ‘know’ that. But the bruising from the feedback. Planted this learning deeper. Such that I won’t neglect it this time.

Only failure can plant some things deep inside us.

Realising the power of failure can give us courage

There are 2 roads we can take following failure.

Failure can cause regrets. Shrivel us up. Send us into hiding. As we try to protect ourselves.

But when we use these 3 keys to fail successfully. We see the value of failure. The power of it. How it puts us ahead of others.

And this can give us courage. To risk again. Because whatever happens. We know we won’t be worse off.

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