5 Ways Of Turning Failure Into Success
Ambitious people tend to be the most likely to take failures badly. However, failure is an important tool for success. Here are 5 ways you can make failure work for you.
You are a project manager, which means you are ambitious. You cannot do all that project management training, and push yourself into one of the most challenging careers there is, without having ambition. However, those who strive for success like PM’s do, can struggle to deal with failure. If you relate to this, firstly recognise and take comfort in the fact you are not alone. When you thrive on success, and get a real buzz from it, the lows really can be tough. However, failure is an important part of your career path, and as much as it is part of your job to avoid it, when it does happen you must learn to embrace it. And here’s how:
Know Who You Are
It sounds so simple, but so many of us spend all our time looking outwards and never really take the time to look inside ourselves and get to know who we are properly. You should have your own personal mission statement and a deep understanding of your strengths and your weaknesses, accepting both equally. We all need a purpose, and having a good understanding of what yours is in both your PM career and in your personal life means you have a really easy path back to your motivation following a failure. When you don’t see the bigger picture, failures can seem bigger than they actually are.
Have Goals
If you know what your purpose is, you will know what your goals are. Failure does not get rid of your goals, in fact, failure spurs you on even more to reach them. Writing your goals down is also a great way to avoid failure and help you appreciate the smaller successes.
Have An Understanding Of Your Goals
The what is not as important as the why when it comes to goals. You should understand the benefits of your goals, which will in turn enable you to understand that your failures do not mean you should forget about them. The absolute gut wrench of a failure is nothing compared to the sense of achievement you will feel when you reach your goals. If you think the journey up the mountain is hard, just think about the amazing views you will have when you get up there.
Have An Inspirational Peer Group
Do not spend time with people who quash your dreams. The more negativity you surround yourself with, the more likely you are to succumb to failure and struggle to move on from it.
Look Forward
The sooner you accept that failure is a part of life, the sooner you will be able to go with full gusto into everything you do, and keep looking forward, no matter how much you stumble. You cannot control everything, and the learning in business is just as important as the success. You won’t find one inspirational entrepreneur talking about their journey to success without talking about the mistakes and failures they made along the way. If you focus on the potential failures you will stop looking forward and getting excited about the potential successes you can have. Just think about certain failures in your life and where they led you to, there will be at least one that if it hadn’t happened, you would not have learnt from it and been successful later on.
“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure” – Bill Gates
So keep your outlook flexible, positive and looking ahead and you will be able to not only accept your failures, but use them to your advantage.
