So, you failed. It’s natural. It happens. Success tends to lie at the top of a mountain of failures, and you’ll need to climb up to reach it. 

What matters is not the scale of your failure, but how you respond to it. It’s tempting to wallow and spiral, declaring yourself defeated and deciding you’ll never move on. We don’t need to tell you that this reaction isn’t ideal. Instead, it’s best to keep going. Not to ignore the mess-up and pretend it didn’t happen, but to acknowledge where you went wrong and use that knowledge to grow and stride onwards. 

That might seem easier said than done, though. So how exactly do we use our failures as climbing rungs rather than weights that drag us down? 

“How we cope with failure could be the difference between our ultimate success or failure,” Fiona Harrold, a top executive coach, business mentor, consultant and author of Be Your Own Life Coach, tells Stylist. “Life becomes very tough if we struggle with setbacks and can’t move on from disappointment. In 25 years of coaching, I’ve seen people diminished by failure, living a reduced life because, in one instance, they never recovered from a bankruptcy ten years previously. Being able to bounce back from failure is a must in life.”

Below, Harrold shares her ‘three P’ approach to rebounding from a dip. 

It might sound heavy to talk about forgiveness for a work-related failure, but that truly is the first step. You can’t move forwards if you’re still beating yourself up for your mis-step. 

That’s why the first ‘P’ is for perspective. Take a moment to reframe your failure. Rather than some grand gaffe on your part, something that defines you forevermore, consider the reality of your failure. Might you be catastrophising or holding yourself to unfair standards? In the grand scheme of things, how big is this mess-up, truly?

Try to view each failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. “Turning blame around requires a shift in thinking about the situation, moving from seeing it as ‘failure’ to ‘feedback’,” recommends Harrold. “Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb, famously said, ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ Lighten up about ‘failure’. It’s part of the process!

“Ask yourself:

• What have I learnt from the situation?
• What is my big ‘take-away’ from this experience that I can share with others?
• What did I learn that I could not have learnt in any other way?”

And, as part of this moment of reflection, make the conscious decision to forgive yourself. 

“Having a process to forgive yourself is important,” says Harrold. “Ask yourself: Am I truly sorry for what has happened? Can I make amends? Am I willing to forgive myself? It helps to write out ‘I forgive myself’, and if that feels hard, start with, ‘I am willing to consider forgiving myself’. You may even want to try writing out, ‘I forgive myself for everything’ if you’ve been in the habit of feeling shame for some time.”

The second ‘P’ is: don’t make it personal. Avoid making this failure your personality. “Do not label yourself ‘a failure’,” Harrold says. “Studies show that if we make failure personal and take on the identity of someone who is ‘a failure’, we make it harder to bounce back. It’s as though we condemn ourselves to live out our lives as a self-fulfilling prophesy. As Henry Ford famously said, ‘Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right’.

“You are not a failure. There may be events that you wish had worked out differently, but you are not a failure. Choose a label that works for you in a productive way. Could you label yourself as ‘determined’, ‘driven’ or ‘passionate’? 

“Pin something on yourself that feels positive, lifts your spirit and motivates you. Balance those events with events that did work out. Each time you see something that hasn’t worked, turn your attention to something that has, so you train yourself to be balanced and fair in the way that you think.”

The final ‘P’ of the three P method? Persevere.  

Harrold notes: “Every successful person has had failures. They may not draw attention to those setbacks and their eventual success is all that we see. However, I assure you, no one who scales the heights has got there without some lows.” Remember this as you decide to move forward, and just keep going. 

“If you’re on the right path for you, persevere,” advises Harrold. “Stoke the fires of your motivation with stirring self-talk. How you speak to yourself is proven to spur you on or demoralise you and keep you stuck. Quite simply, repeat, ‘I can do this’.  You’ll be amazed how it will work. You can do this. Remember, you can’t fail if you never give up.”

Images: Adobe