How to Fail

The skill that makes taking risks—and trying again—possible.

By Brooke Hicks · The Life Coach School

What if the reason you haven’t gone after what you want isn’t that you don’t know how? What if you’re afraid of how you’ll treat yourself when it doesn’t work?

We spend so much time learning how to succeed. I want us to get much better at failing. Because when you can miss the mark without making yourself the problem, you become willing to do the very things that make success possible.

What are you calling failure?

Start by defining it. You expected a particular result, took action, and didn’t get that result. That is very different from being a failure as a person.

When we don’t separate those things, we keep our expectations small. We stay with what we already know. We avoid the disappointment of trying something new, but we also avoid the life we want to create.

A missed expectation is information. The painful meaning we attach to it is something we can examine.

The result and your interpretation are different

Imagine offering a class and wanting five people to attend. Three people sign up.

You can decide that nobody wants what you have to offer, that you aren’t good at this, and that you should never teach again. Those thoughts create discouragement. Discouragement makes quitting seem reasonable.

Or you can notice that three people want your class. You still wanted five. You haven’t pretended otherwise. But now you can get curious about what you might change next time.

The number of sign-ups is the same. Your experience and your next action are different.

This is the work: thoughts create feelings, feelings drive actions, and actions create results. If you want to keep going after a disappointing result, pay attention to what you’re making that result mean.

Have your own back before you begin

Perfectionism can sound like a commitment to excellence. Sometimes it is an attempt to avoid the way we talk to ourselves when we make a mistake.

Before you take the risk, make a different agreement with yourself. You will prepare. You will show up. And if you don’t meet your expectation, you will treat yourself with respect.

You can evaluate your work honestly without attacking your worth. You can learn what didn’t work without deciding that you don’t work.

That agreement changes the risk. You’re no longer signing up for a new challenge and a guaranteed round of self-criticism if it goes badly.

Build confidence in your ability to learn

It’s easy to feel confident doing something you’ve done many times. But what about something you’ve never tried?

You can build confidence in your willingness to fail, learn, and return. You don’t need proof that your first attempt will work. You need to know that an imperfect attempt won’t be your last.

Think about a child learning to walk. Falling and pushing back up are part of developing the strength to walk. Avoiding every fall would prevent that learning.

Your new skills need practice, too. The aim is to get better at learning from the attempt.

Take risks without practicing self-sabotage

There is an important distinction here. Offering a class and getting fewer sign-ups than you wanted is different from having people sign up and then failing to prepare or show up.

I’m encouraging the kind of failure that comes from stretching beyond what you already know. If you keep withholding effort or repeating the same approach without learning from it, examine the thoughts driving that pattern.

Notice, too, when confusion becomes a hiding place. Staying undecided can protect you from finding out whether a decision will work. You can choose a next step while you’re still figuring things out.

Practice one useful failure

Choose something meaningful that asks you to stretch. Define what you want to achieve, take the action, and record what actually happens.

Then ask yourself: What did I learn? What will I change? How will I support myself while I try again?

You don’t have to love every disappointing result. You can become someone who learns from it and keeps going. That is a skill worth practicing.