If you want to know how to stop failing at everything it probably means I don’t need to tell you just how much failing sucks. It can be a very painful experience to have. Failure usually comes along with feelings of frustration, anger, anxiety and stress. Not to mention other negative emotions.
If you feel like you fail at everything you are not alone. There are millions of people who have shared the same shame, frustration, fear and desperation that you have felt. I’m sure you will be relieved to know that there is a way to stop failing at everything. And it is a lot easier than you think. On top of that it could take just minutes to go from where you are now to where you don’t fail at everything ever again. Don’t believe me? Ok.
I will share 7 things that will help you. Let’s get started.
Fix negative thought patterns
Here is something for you to think about. It is impossible for you to fail at everything. If you fail at everything, you succeeded to fail. Because you succeeded, you have not failed at everything.
Let’s get real for a moment. You don’t fail at everything. Do you? Did you fail to read this sentence? Isn’t that an example of an instance when you have not failed at something?
So you don’t fail at everything. But you feel as though you fail at everything. Do you agree. The question then is how do you stop feeling like you fail at everything? I will get to that. But first there is something very important you need to understand.
You do not experience reality. But you experience your perception of reality. Two people can have exactly the same experience but have vastly different perceptions of it. This is because the information coming from your senses it’s passed through a filter in your brain. And you can have a very big effect on how that information is filtered. You can do this by shifting your focus one way or the other.
If you are focused on failure that is what you will see to the exclusion of everything else that is not failure. Your perception is that you fail at everything. But this is not the truth. The truth is that your filter has removed the successes and left the failure. And this is what you see.
The best remedies for us to break these negative patterns of thinking. Challenge them whenever they arise. When you find yourself wondering why you fail all the time ask yourself a couple of questions. Is this thought accurate? What evidence do I have that this belief is false?
Celebrate Every Win
What if you could start winning more and more everyday? Want to know a secret? You already win a lot. Be honest. Do you recall your last win?
Here’s the thing. Most of your wins are small ones. And it is very easy to miss them. Especially when your mind is focussed on how much you are failing at everything. Remember, the challenge you are facing is not that you fail at everything. The challenge you have is that you feel like you are failing at everything.
If you feel like you fail at everything you do, it is because you are focussing on all the things you got wrong. Changing what you think about and focus on will affect how you feel.
By shifting your focus away from your failures and towards your successes, you can change how you feel. The more aware you become of your wins, even the smallest ones, the more you will feel like a winner.
Feeling like a winner is important for your motivation. If you have no confidence in your ability to achieve any given task, it weakens your motivation. By boosting the confidence you have in yourself, you can elevate the motivation you feel.
Want to know a secret? Having the right level of motivation is an important part of succeeding at anything. If you do not have the motivation, you will not take enough of the actions that will create the success you want.
Focussing on your wins and celebrating them will help you build up your confidence. And the higher your confidence, the greater your motivation will be.
The beauty here is that the more motivation you have, the more wins you will create. And your wins will become bigger and bigger over time.
Change your relationship with failure
Failure is a good thing. It might not feel that way to you. But that is only because of your relationship with it. The unfortunate thing is that from a very young age the school system teaches us that failure is a bad thing. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Failure is a part of the journey to success. It holds the keys that open the doors that keep your from your desires. And the keys are the lessons it wants to teach you. The only problem with failure is that most people do not learn from it. If you do not learn the lessons it’s so badly teach you, it is like trying to get through a locked door.
A helpful way to think about failure is to see it as a combination to a safe. Thomas Edison failed 10000 times before he successfully created a functioning light bulb. He tried 10000 different combinations until he got into the safe. With each failure he knew that he was one step closer to success.
Failing doesn’t say anything about you. But it speaks volumes about your approach. If you fail at anything, all it means is that you need to refine your approach. It means that you need to try a different combination.
If you try a combination on a safe, and you get it wrong, you have valuable feedback. You can eliminate that combination and try another one.
The same is true of life in general. When you try something and you do not get the result you want, you have valuable feedback. If you use this feedback to make some adjustments, you move yourself one step closer to cracking the code that is success.
“You either succeed or you learn. Take failure off the table.” – John Jacobs
Just get started
What is by far the easiest and most common way to fail? Giving up, right? Wrong. Giving up is one of the top contributors to failure, but it is not number one. The way that most people fail is by never getting started.
Here is another question. Where is the richest place on earth? The answer is the cemetery. There lies the billionaire who never started up her billion dollar company. And the author who never wrote that book that topped every best seller list. What about that person who could have but never change humanity for the better? You will find them and countless others there. In the cemetery.
Be honest. Have you lived up to your full potential? Can you honestly say that you have achieved everything you are capable of achieving? Or are you capable of more?
I think you will agree that you are capable of much more than you have achieved. You have far more potential than you may ever know. The thing is though, you cannot realise even a sliver of your potential if you never get started.
Getting started can be a difficult thing for many people. I would definitely count myself as someone who has difficulty getting started.
There are many things that will get in your way. The fear of failing. Not knowing where or how to get started. Procrastinating.
All of these things and the many others I did not mention can only get in your way if you let them.
There is always a way for you to get the ball rolling. It does not matter how far you have to go. You cannot arrive without ever taking the first step.
Find any way of getting started. It doesn’t matter how small, it only matters that you start.
Never give up
If not getting started is the most common cause of failure, then giving up comes second.
Do you want to have more success in your life? Well, there is something you need to know. And you may not like it.
Success is not meant to be easy. If it were easy, everybody would be successful. Everybody would have the perfect body, have a few million in the bank and be happy all the time.
To have, be or do something new, you need to take enough of the right actions. To succeed at anything, you need only two things. First you need to have the right strategy. Then you need to take enough of the right actions based upon that strategy.
The thing is, most people know what strategies can lead them to the outcomes they want. The problem that we tend to run into is that we expect things to be easier than they really are.
This is not your fault. It is just how the modern world is. Smart marketers have sold us the idea that success is easy. Want to lose weight? Just take “this” pill. No diet required. Want to make a million dollars? Just buy “this” software. And wham. A million dollars. No work required.
The truth is not nearly as glamorous as many people want you to believe. Want to know the real truth? Success is not a single event. It is the end result of taking enough action. The truth is that succeeding requires far more effort than most people realize.
It is easy to quit. Don’t. And don’t make your target smaller. Instead, find a way of putting in more effort, and learning from the feedback you get.
Grow into success
Can I be totally honest with you? I have given up a lot in my life. And looking back now, something has become glaringly clear to me. I placed too much emphasis on what I wanted to achieve, and not enough on who I needed to become.
What area of your life do you want to become more successful in? I will assume that you know what you need to do to have more success. Or at the very least, you have some idea, even if it is not completely clear.
So you know what you want to have. And you know what you need to do to get it. But do you know who you need to become?
Well, the simple answer is, you need to become the person who does the things that create the success you want.
If you want to have something you do not have right now, you cannot have it by doing what you have always done. You need to do the things that will result in your desired outcome. And many times, this means you need to grow.
There are many ways you will need to grow, and it will depend on what you want to achieve, in addition to many other factors. You will definitely need to grow into the type of person who takes enough action. This will naturally mean that you need to grow into the type of person who has the motivation to get things done.
Many times you will find that you do not have the right strategy for success. And this is just another way you will need to grow. Without the right strategy, success is near impossible. And finding the right one often means that you will have to let go of old beliefs and grow into newer more helpful ones.
Without growing into the type of person who is motivated enough, success is made more difficult and less likely. And without growing in the other ways, it becomes harder still.
So again I ask you, who do you need to become for you to have the success you want to have?
Master your motivation
In my opinion, there is only one way to fail. Giving up. I know it appears I have just contradicted myself, and if you read on, you will see that I have not.
I said before that the most common way to fail is to not start, and the second is to give up. The way I see it, not getting started is the same as giving up. It is giving up before you begin. Isn’t it?
If you never want to fail again you need one thing. Motivation.
With the right level of motivation, getting started is not a problem. And giving up mid way is not an option.
The thing is, you can grow into the right motivation habits. Don’t believe me? Check out this free course on motivation.
If you feel like you fail at everything, this could be a sign that you need to master your motivation.
With enough motivation, you will not quit. And if you do not quit, you allow yourself to learn the secrets hidden within the feedback you are getting, and to use it to develop the right strategy. The strategy that will give you the success that you want.
By getting your motivation wrong, failing to start and giving up along the way are almost a certainty. If, on the other hand, you get it right, all forms of giving up fly out the window, and success becomes the only outcome.
Conclusion
When it boils down to it, a problem cannot exist without you. Something can only be a problem when you feel that it is a problem. You can only fail at something if you look at it through the lens of failure. And if you do this, it will lead you to real failure. Giving up.
If you look at feedback as failure, then you will see a problem. When you see failure as feedback, you see an opportunity.
Which would you prefer more of in your life? Problems or opportunities?
The simple truth is that every problem has a solution. Every problem is an opportunity. Each failure is an opportunity for you to grow into the success you want to have.
Failing is painful right? And feeling like you fail at everything sucks like all hell right? Well, I want you to take a moment to acknowledge the suck. Feel it. And then give yourself a big clap, and do a celebratory dance. Why?
You have a lot of feedback, and a lot of opportunities to succeed. And that pain you feel is you telling yourself that something needs to change. Because you know that it is time for change, you have already taken the first step towards success. You have done the hard part. Accepting the truth. Celebrate this win. Because you have not failed. You have just moved one step closer to success.
Keep moving forward. And keep growing.
