#35: The 4-Step Mind Map for Negotiating Setback and Failure

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” — John Wooden

Reaching a certain age can conjure dark thoughts of failure: the job you worked for years to get but got passed over for...the former spouse who was wrong for you...the family you didn’t get to start. So you look for new directions...and the answer to achieving your goals, or giving them up, feels obvious: you simply make new ones.

But taking up new projects obscures the problem. When you aim at a future goal, your satisfaction is deferred because your success has yet to come. The moment you succeed, your achievement is in the past. Meanwhile, your engagement with the project subverts itself: you either fail at pursuing a goal or, in succeeding, you end its power to guide your life.

The problem isn’t that you’ll run out of projects--surely, you can create new ones--it’s that your way of engaging with the ones that matter most to you is by trying to avoid failure. And when you reach your goal, you exhaust your interaction with something good, as if you were to make friends for the sake of saying goodbye.

When you’re obsessed with replacing old goals with new ones as you work to achieve more or work to avoid failure, your satisfaction is always in the future. Or the past. It’s mortgaged, then archived, but never possessed. In pursuing goals, when you aim at outcomes, you might preclude the possibility or value of the pursuit, extinguishing the sparks of meaning in your life.

No wonder you may be experiencing a midlife malaise...haunted by the hollowness of everyday life. At the root of this is a discomfort with how to handle setbacks and failure.

Naturally, you’re wondering what to do about this.

In this article, you’re going to learn a 4-Step Mind Map for negotiating setbacks and failure--or managing your missteps--so you can unhook from these experiences and create space for generating new meaning and satisfaction.

If you’re going to live a life worth living – one wherein you’re going to try new things, and especially to be new things – you need to acknowledge that failures and setbacks are pretty much guaranteed to happen.

So then the important question is, “How can I overcome failure – even and especially devastating failure – and regain confidence?” This is true in relationships, both personal and professional...in our health...in our work... in our lives in general.

I know a thing or two about overcoming failure...plagued by an autoimmune thyroid disorder, anxiety and depression loomed. Crippling chronic fatigue and HPA axis dysfunction. Professional uncertainty. A breakup with my long-term partner. And the cherry on top: unwitting, months-long black mold exposure that exacerbated everything.

And, in terms of negotiating setbacks, my wisdom of experience is also bolstered by all kinds of degrees and certifications. Really...I'm not winging it here, folks.

When clients come to me wanting more satisfying midlife, the emotions they’re feeling include a mix of regret, nervousness, sadness, anger, and boredom. A lot of us have the same problem: we’ve entered into a midlife malaise and don’t know what to do to feel better. But we know we want to do something! And often we let our conclusions about setbacks and failure get in the way. No doubt, you can relate.

Well, you’re in luck today, because I’m sharing 4 steps to negotiate setbacks and failure to greater effect.

STEP ONE. Recognize this question, “How can I overcome failure and regain confidence?” is not about the possibility (as in, “How is it possible for me to … ?”); it’s about necessity.

You must find a way to deal with setbacks, and failures, even and perhaps especially devastating failures, and to regain confidence when you lose it. You must find a way to overcome it because failures and setbacks, and even blow to your confidence, are going to happen.

Failing and losing are not themselves cause for concern. In fact, if they’re part of “the good life,” then not ever having failures would be more cause for concern. Disregard drawing conclusions about your character, your worth, and/or your entire existence because you’ve seen failures. You’ll see failures...you’re supposed to see failures -- otherwise, you’re not giving enough of yourself to your life.

Repeat out loud after me the following statement--you may wish to hit pause to do this:

“I’m committed to living a life worth living, to creating new things, and to become all I have yet to become. I understand that setbacks and failures will be part of my journey. So I will make it a must to learn to deal with them in a way that’s healthy, productive, and conducive to picking myself up, dusting myself off, and moving forward in my life. I will not take them primarily as signs that I should stop, or that I am a failure – I will first take them as a sign that I am endeavoring to be something different, something more than I was yesterday. This is good.”

So you tried, and you failed. And? What do you want to say? That you shouldn’t have tried because you failed? That wouldn’t be fair.

Avoid drawing demeaning, robust conclusions about whether, given your ineptitude, you should even be allowed to exist.
Avoid being dramatic about the failure before you try to find a reason to try again, and you’ll get farther.
Make the main point of your failure to learn to fail better next time, not to assess the contents of your being.

The easiest way to get rid of the good majority of your anxiety about trying (and failing) is to get rid of the fear of making a mistake. And that’s really not too difficult for it amounts to no more, though no less than changing your conception of what a mistake actually is.

A “mistake” is an incorrect idea or opinion that comes to light, or a thing done incorrectly. The qualifications here are important because it’s only when the incorrect idea -- which may have been lying there dormant for some time, and may have otherwise continued this way indefinitely – it’s only when it comes to light that it gets noticed; and of course, noted as “a mistake.” Now, I know you’ve likely experienced this “coming to light” as a bad thing; and this is because it’s a bad thing for your ego. But it’s actually a good thing.

Is it better to continue living with an erroneous belief, or to live without it? Even if that meant it had to expose itself (and you with it) for you to do so? Which is better? For you, and your life, which is better?

Each and every mistake, seen in this light, is simply an opportunity for growth (and likely an irritating reminder for the ego). It is not The End, it is not even an end – it is simply an opportunity to correct something. An opportunity you would likely have missed had you not made the mistake.

Yes, it’s unpleasant to be wrong, and distasteful to be shown to be wrong, and tragic to bear the negative consequences of having been mistaken; by all means allow the ego its drama. But it’s nonetheless true that it’s precisely by your mistaken idea coming to light that you see that it needs to be changed. And that’s the point: change it.

Let me say this again: the point of the mistake is not to make you feel stupid or to teach you shame, but to show you where or what you need to change to be better off. A mistake inherently offers an opportunity for growth. Is the secrecy of your misperception (the desire to not know, or let anyone else know, about it) really more important to you than your own quality of life?

A blow to the ego for an opportunity to actually be better off than you once were – this is your choice.

You can always be better off for having made the mistake, inasmuch as you are always better off for “having seen the light.” You always have the opportunity to be better off here – what you choose to do with it -- be embarrassed, or defensive, or deny it -- is entirely up to you. It’s your choice.

You can always choose to “redeem” your mistake, in the most substantial and profound sense, by choosing to learn from it. It’s also true that where you don’t, you are likely to find yourself making the same mistake, replaying the same pattern over and over until you get it and you do change. Just change your mistaken idea or behavior to conform to the new truth life has exposed.

ALRIGHT...MOVING ONTO STEP TWO: Recognize that failure and success are part of the same path.

Part of the reason you’re going to encounter setbacks and failures is that you’re living and trying for new things, new creations, new ways of being. The other reason you’ll see failures and setbacks is that success and failure are not two different roads like you would meet at a crossroads, for example. Success and failure share or are the same road -- picture success just farther down the path.

Think about it: Always before you can do something, there’s a period of time in which you cannot or have not yet proven you can do this thing. At first, you always can’t do it. In fact, up until that 3rd, 10th, or 500th time when you succeed, every prior attempt is a “failure” or a “setback.” This means that successful people fail just as often -- if not more -- than their unsuccessful counterparts. You’ve probably heard some version of the saying that the most important difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that the successful ones never interpret failure as the final word on the subject.

Said another way: the most important difference between successful and unsuccessful people is the way they respond to “losing” and failure.

Repeat to yourself out loud--right now: I want to be a successful person – that means I will take failure to signal that success is simply farther down the road.

Go ahead...actually say it out loud.

OKAY--IT’S TIME FOR STEP THREE. Applaud yourself for trying.

Everyone wants to be “the person who succeeds”...fine. Not really worth talking about. The real question, and choice before you, is whether you want to be the person that tries. Hint: Yes, you do. So when you do, applaud yourself first.

Remember that these were your options: try or not try. Genuinely applaud yourself for trying, for putting yourself out there. This will help you to retain, or regain, confidence.

Side Note: Your applause should be equal to your earnestness (how much of yourself you really gave) and the raw effort you made -- not in proportion to your perceived success or lack thereof. Applaud yourself to the extent that you got in the ring instead of sitting on the sideline.

And not like it’s a “consolation prize,” because it isn’t. Give yourself props for doing the most important thing: putting yourself out there and trying. Even when you “win” remember to celebrate the effort, enjoy the result.

STEP FOUR. Confine your conclusions -- and your embarrassment -- to the iteration or instance. Don’t let this specific setback become global -- about you, your abilities, or your life. Confine your conclusions, and your shame, to this iteration. This try. This specific experiment. This particular manifestation of your effort.

For example: say you fail an exam for a particular professional certification. After studying and practicing, you fail the first time – or the second, or the third – what do you conclude? That you’re incapable of success in this profession? That you’ll never pass your test so you should just stop? None of that is necessarily true! And in fact: what you are, and what you are or aren’t capable of, is still undetermined at the end of a failure because success exists farther down this same road.

But fine, say you’re incapable. The question is incapable of or inept at what exactly? Watch the tendency to draw increasing global conclusions as a result of a specific failure. Do you question your ability to pass a test or to thrive under artificial conditions as if you were out there in your job? Do you go on to question your ability to do the job at all, or to ever be capable of it?

And what about your ability to ever get things right, to ever get what you want, or to ever make what you want happen in your life? Are all these things being brought into question by this particular failure?

The more we generalize and abstract our conclusions from the particular iteration of our effort, the more we inflate its failure to cover ever increasing aspects of ourselves and our lives. And the harder it will be for us to do 2 things: 1) learn from it; and 2) try again.

Remember: Confine your conclusions and your shame to the iteration; avoid spinning off into a soliloquy of life-long character judgments or what a lost cause you are at “this.” Relegating your conclusions to the effort rather than to your essential nature is definitely a healthier, if not more correct, way to engage with life.

If you’re wanting a life of contribution...of greater meaning and satisfaction, then you need to be able to navigate setbacks and failure instead of bypassing them for some other new goal.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you give up on your worthwhile goals--their achievement matters. But there’s tremendous value in the process. And if you hope to overcome the gloom of self-defeat, you must appreciate the process that inevitably involves setbacks and failure. In fact, this is how you cultivate your wisdom--through successfully resolving your hardships.

You see: “Life is a successive unfolding of success from failure.” Every effort preceding success will invariably be to some extent a failure. Life--really lived--consists of these iterations.

And the good news is that--when it comes to setbacks--you have options:

Regret trying OR applaud yourself for trying
Let the failure give you enough reason to sit down and step out of the ring indefinitely OR learn from it so you can improve your next attempt
Pretend that sitting on the sidelines is the reasonable, rational and objective thing to do OR contain the result of your effort to the iteration or specific effort

Just because you didn’t yet doesn’t mean you can’t. It may mean you won’t, but that’s entirely still unknown and totally up to you.

Choose to be proud of and/or applaud yourself for making an effort/putting yourself out there, instead of embarrassed by the particular iteration.
Choose, if it’s a thing you still want to do, to try again.
Liberate yourself from the fear of error, or of making a mistake, and committing to simply failing better.

All of these choices will give you courage.

Remember also the alternative: to take an indefinite seat. This alternative, far from sparing you further shame and indignity, serves up an even greater humiliation: your own lack of belief in yourself.

When you get knocked down, and decide not to get up again - I don’t care how “good” your reasons are - you send yourself an extremely clear message that reads: “I am unworthy of even my own support; so much so, that I will not even have another try.”

Worse than someone else, and even everyone else, saying we’re a bad bet, is our own agreement that it’s so. This message cuts like absolute and total abandonment from the one being on this planet whose esteem you actually need and value the most, because it is.

Find a way to tell yourself, “I believe in you enough to give the energy, time, and attention for another try. I love you enough to (re)invest, and allow you to fail better the next time.”

Choose this as your default way of being.

And if you need help in making this your default way of being, then let’s set up a free consult.