How to get Success From Failure

| About Dr. Comeau | My MusicHow to Succeed at FailureWhen I think about my life, all I can think about is that I’m a failure.”I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this remark from patients and others, announcing that the sub total of their life’s accomplishments as nothing more than a symptom of depression, along with a sense of irritability, indecisiveness, and a lack of energy and momentum. Fear of failure is one of the most common excuses that people give to explain why they did not attempt what they perceived to be a difficult or demanding task.What is failure?Most people use the word failure to mean the opposite of success, as in win or lose. The word failure comes from the Latin root fal, from which we also get the words false, fault and fall. Another meaning of the word worth mentioning is a sense of deception; what a new car buyer feels when it is defective, breaks down, or fails, shortly after the purchase is made. I believe that we burden ourselves with all of these meanings and their attendant feelings each time that we apply words such as failure to describe others or ourselves.A number of years ago, Harvard psychologist David McClelland found that when children were presented with a task to perform (tossing a ring onto a stick), those who stood either so close to the stick that they could not miss or so far away that they mostly missed both scored lowest in other measures of motivation to achieve. The most successful children seemed to be able to position themselves at such a distance that, while there was still a challenge, the goal was reachable and probably enjoyable.When we say, “I’m a failure,” we are mistaking what is likely a momentary state for an enduring trait. I think that we need to reconsider when success or failure assessments may be better understood as lying on a continuum rather as the either/or of two polar extremes. We should speak of relative amounts of success or failure, or what went right as well as what went wrong. I realize that sometimes the bottom line seems to have only one word in it, but my wisdom sense is that life is constantly in flux it’s just too soon to use words such as failure to describe anybody who’s still living and willing to give life a try.How then can we get over fear of failure and help our kids to be fearless of failure?• We can teach that each action and effort that we make is simply a step in one or direction or another. We can emphasize that the quality of spirit and dedication to task that one gives is more important than what is achieved at any particular moment. No athlete has ever won every race, nor has any team remained undefeated. The best we can do is to try to be our best each day.• Consider changing your own attitudes about failure. Take away its negative and hopeless elements and leave only that to fail is simply to partially learn or partially succeed. Give yourself permission to keep failing until you reach your goals. Then, keep refining your goals and raising the bar, reflecting the ever-changing horizon of life that lies before you.. . . . .smile.