311. questioning failures

Failure is inevitable, yet we are so scared of it that we’re willing to do almost anything to avoid it, minimize its impact, or completely deny its existence. In doing so, we only exacerbate our shortcomings by refusing to accept and learn from what a failed experience can teach us. Instead of retracting, minimizing or denying, it’s imperative to take ownership of what we have done, fully admit to our mistakes and failures, so that we can learn the lessons they teach and figure out how to prevent them from happening again.

A simple exercise in ownership comes from the book Sovereignty, by Ryan Michler, where seeking to reframe how we look at our experiences, he puts forth the following line of questioning…

• Instead of asking, “whose fault is this?” ask yourself, “what can I do to ensure this doesn’t happen again?”

• Instead of asking, “why didn’t ____________ do ____________?” ask yourself, “what can I do to ensure ____________ gets done next time?”

• Instead of asking, “why am I surrounded by incompetent people?” ask yourself, “what can I do to surround myself with competent people?”

The first set of questions do nothing to improve the situation, whereas the second focuses on what can be done to improve the situation. The quality of our outcomes will be determined by our responses to the failures we will inevitably come up against. By taking ownership of the situation, and asking the right questions to move forward, we can make the best out of any bad experience.