Reframe Failure & Grow Your Grit
We’ve all been there. Something we’d hoped and worked hard for didn’t pan out. We fell short.
“What went wrong? Was it my fault—or was it due to a weird wrinkle in the universe?”
The rumination can go on and on. We can spend a lot of energy trying to create a do-over that’s not possible.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can reframe our so-called failures into life lessons that build our confidence, give us the gusto to keep going and grow our grit.
Some years ago, I was laid off from a job I loved. My boss mentioned a few things that didn't make sense to me. I replayed interactions we'd had. I struggled to understand why it had happened.
It took time, but, eventually, I wondered if there might be something better out there -- waiting for me to discover it. I picked myself up and began looking for another job. Within a couple of months, I landed a dream job that I hadn’t even allowed myself to dream of! I now consider that painful incident as a gift. It had prompted me to reaffirm my values, get clear on the kind of people I want to work with and propelled me into a new, more fulfilling job.
I didn’t realize it then, but I had just grown my grit. In this TED talk, psychologist Angela Duckworth describes "grit" as a blend of passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Turns out that the ability to reframe failure into opportunity is an invaluable life skill one can build.
I recently read Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, a wonderful book that guides the reader through a process to uncover your deepest values and desires for your work life and create opportunities you could never find by simply reading job notices.
The DYL authors have a lot to say about failure -- “the raw material of success.” They encourage readers to develop “failure immunity”: “When you remember that you are always … becoming more and more yourself and designing how to express the amazingness of you into the world, you can’t fail…. Sure, you’ll experience pain and loss or serious setbacks, but they won’t make you less of a person, and you don’t experience these setbacks as an existential ‘failure’ from which you can’t recover.”
Next time you feel like you've failed, try Burnett and Evans’ tool to reframe failure into opportunity:
Log your failures: List the incidents when you messed up somehow or experienced a setback of any kind. Use whatever time frame feels right to you.
Categorize your failures into three buckets: a) a “screwup” or a simple mistake about something you usually get right; b) a “weakness” or an ongoing challenge such as tardiness; or c) a “growth opportunity”—something that didn’t have to happen or doesn’t need to happen again.
Focus on the third category, growth opportunities, and identify the lessons. What did you have control over? What can you do differently next time? There’s real gold in uncovering insights from “failure” so that you learn from your mistakes and boost your ability to prevent another similar setback. Most important, this practice will get into the mindset that every failure is really an opportunity to grow and build your mental and emotional stamina.
For a lesson in reframing rejection to reduce its sting, check out this hilarious TED talk by Jia Jiang.