4 Specific Ways To Get Comfortable With Failure

One of my mentors, Paul Martinelli once said, “I am so ridiculously comfortable with failure it makes other people uncomfortable.” Now understand Paul is not speaking in cliches. In fact, he has been named one of the world’s most successful coaches in the industry, who, by the way, has made over 10’s of millions of dollars in his business.

Most likely you have heard the importance of failing forward and not to fear failure. The problem is not our understanding of the benefits of failure, the problem is our ability to live it out. Most people claim they are ok with failure, but the truth is they are undoubtedly not. Being ok with failure is an over-used narrative, but an under-leveraged reality. In my estimations and observance, 8/10 people say they are ok with failure, but 8/10 do not live that out. They are writing checks with their mouth without their belief being able to cash it. It’s one thing to say you don’t fear failure, it’s a whole other thing to live that way.

Here are 4 specific ways to get comfortable with failure:

1. Play The Long Game

You can’t be successful without long term vision. Life is like investing, the longer you’re willing to hang in there the more wealth you can build. If you keep pulling out your investment on every bad day, you’ll never get ahead. Failure works best when you couple it with endurance. It’s those who are committed for the long haul that best learn from failure. If you are short-sighted you’ll freak out at every failure and miss opportunities to grow from them. Short-term thinkers overreact out of fear and worry, as where long-term thinkers know there’s always another day. I’ve heard it said that the lower-class only thinks day to day, the middle class only thinks year to year, but millionaires think decade to decade. Have a millionaire mindset.

“It’s those who are committed for the long haul that best learn from failure.”
John Barrett

2. Consider Failure As A Lesson For Success

We’ve all heard the famous line about Edison not failing 1,000 times to make a light bulb, but learning 1,000 ways to not make it. But this is still a huge shift in perspective that most people fail to live out. The road to success is paved with failure. You can’t truly become successful without going through failures to get there. It’s the lessons we learn from mistakes that equip us with what we need to get better. Author Napolean Hill once said, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” If we are going to be comfortable with failure we have to view it as our greatest teacher that is showing us the way forward.

3. Never Give Up

Thomas Edison said, “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.” The only way you truly give up is to give up. Sounds simple, but the truth is nothing is impossible until you give up. Once you give up, the possible slips into impossible, not because it is impossible, but because you have made it impossible. Those who are successful in life are those who don’t give up. We all face obstacles on our journey to success. Obstacles teach us how to become successful. Yet many people who face obstacles become disillusioned thinking something is wrong. Obstacles are not always a sign of things going wrong, many times they are a sign of things going right. The path of success is not one of smooth seas and a warm breeze. Make a choice today that you’ll never give up, no matter what the cost.

4. Make Sure You Have A Coach

If we don’t have someone we can go to when we’ve failed we will end up alone and disillusioned. We were created for community; we are better together. The most successful people have coaches, mentors, and friends who help them get through tough times. The toughest thing to go through is not tough times, it’s going through tough times without someone who is tough for us. These tough people help us gain perspective, get encouragement, and hold us accountable when we need it the most. In fact, if you study the most successful people they almost always have a trusted person they can go to that is not biased or too close to the situation. They intentionally insert these people into their lives in order to offer fresh insight. If you want to be all you can be make sure you get people in your life that can make you better.