We’ve all heard the quotes before, “I never lose, I win or I learn.” Or, “I’ve not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” These quotes are to help inspire and guide us through failure. They are meant to help us think differently about our situation. But, man, failing sure stinks.
These quotes can offer little comfort when you are way down stuck in your recent failure. How do I know? Well, I just had a big-time failure this weekend. And it stings. Because of my mistake, it’s going to cost me more time ( 3 to 6 months) and more money (thousands of dollars) to work out of it. I will spend less time with my family; more time in front of a screen. It’s a tough pill to swallow.
My initial reaction was to start justifying why it wasn’t my fault I failed. This person didn’t give me the right info. This other person didn’t respond quick enough. I’ve been feeling ill. Why do I even need to accomplish this in the first place?
My next thoughts were how can I change the outcome without doing any more work? Can I talk myself out of the outcome with the right person? Are there any short cuts I can take to fix it? Once I realized the answer to all those questions was no, I started thinking maybe I should just give up. Just walk away from the situation.
All of that happened within a span of 12 hours. Then came ignoring it. I’ve tried to distract myself so I didn’t have to think about it, trying to numb the pain. But you can’t do that forever. Apparently, I can only do it for about 5 hours. I’ve eventually had to make myself deal with it.
Now, it’s time to analyze what went wrong. Why did it happen? Was it a lack of preparation, execution, intelligence, the right attitude? Probably a combination of all of them.
Now that I know why it happened, the next step is to figure out how to ensure it doesn’t happen again. I have to develop a plan that will address the causes, then execute on it. And this is where the quotes from above finally have some meaning. If I execute on my plan with a negative attitude, then there is a chance it won’t work, at least not fully.
Again, those quotes are to help inspire us to have the right mindset. To realize that this isn’t the end of the world. To persevere. Before you can do that though, you have to work through your emotions, (your own BS), understand the why behind the failure, develop a plan to succeed; then you can endure.
Failure sucks, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
The Tech Exec 