One thing I can guarantee you is that even when you have the best made plans, something will go wrong or at least not according to plan. Some people call it failure. I’ve experienced it so many times I’ve lost count. Many folks don’t respond well when things do go as planned and “the yogurt hits the fan” so here are six things to remember when that happens to you.
1) Remember and understand that failure is part of success, and that failure happens in front of or before success in almost every case. Knowing that, then failure could be seen as just another step closer to success.
2) There is always gold in the failure so be sure to mine the gold and the lessons from the failure. But how? You have to take time to reflect on what happened. Mind your self-talk during this stage too. This reflection isn’t a rehash of what all when wrong and epic the failure was. Use these three simple after action review questions:
a. What went right?
b. What went wrong?
c. What can we do different next time?
3) Keep your sense of humor. I guarantee you someone else is laughing at your failure so you might as well laugh too. There is humor in the situation so take minute and laugh at yourself. There have been plenty of times where I thought…”Wow!” and then had a good laugh.
4) Keep your perspective on the situation. Remember it was a bad few minutes during a day not a bad day. Work to compartmentalize the situation and failure so you can keep it in perspective. Remember too that the situation was the failure not you! Even though I don’t know you, I can guarantee that you are not a failure!
5) Don’t become familiar with failure. Embrace it as part of the process, just a step in the journey to success and do not let it into your heart. When you let a failure into your heart it begins to erode your self-image and you lose perspective.
6) As the famous Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II, Winston Churchill famously said: “……never give in, never give in, never, never, never…” Churchill was talking to the whole world when he uttered those famous words in 1941 right at the beginning of World War II. He wanted the people to look at the days of war as days of change and greatness, not as dark days. The fact that the days of war were hard and difficult could not be ignored but it was how people looked at them that gave them hope.
The next time things don’t go as planned… take a step back and run through these six steps to gain perspective and the build your muscles of resilience. Doing this will help you to become more resilient. In addition, you will learn to respond to a situation and not default to the reaction. Remember when that stimulus of things not going according to plan occurs, you have a choice in how you respond. Viktor Fankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, says it this way: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
