Brian Kim has just posted an excellent article about his Different Way of Looking At Failure. It resonates with some of my thoughts so much, that I decided to make my comments on this a separate post.

I’ve always been a believer that failures make you stronger. I take them as a natural part of my life, and also a crucial part of my personal and professional development. It’s a part of the game you can’t play without. You have virtually no chance to be successful in anything without failing at some stage along your way.

At the same time, the more I talk to people, the more I realize how lucky I am to have such a natural positive look on failures. Most people don’t have it, and it’s rather hard for them to even accept my point of view, let alone to learn the approach and start using it in their lives. So I think that we all can only welcome posts like Brian’s, cause they give us additional understanding of what happens when we fail, and gives us the motivation we need to keep trying until we succeed.

Most failures are rarely irreversible. If you fail once, you’re likely to get another chance to try again later, and its your willingness to give it another go that determines your chances for a success. If you feel too depressed about failing and never find the courage to try again, you may never notice how much you’ve benefited and grown from your failure:

…you will experience pain after you hit failure, but if you rest and feed yourself with more information, knowledge, experience, and ideas, the next time you go at it again, you’ll realize you are stronger than before because of it. It’s that time from the moment you fail to the next time you tackle your goal that makes you stronger than before, provided that you intend to go at it again. If you don’t, you’ll never realize that you were stronger than before and you’ll never start hitting that favorable cycle.

In one of my earlier posts, Quick Recovery, I’ve already given you my advice on failures:

Accept it – everyone fails, and not always it’s due to the personal qualities and features. Quite often there is absolutely nothing you could do. There is nothing anybody could do. So all you do in such situations is to accept this and think one step forward – what needs to be done next to make up for the opportunity you’ve just lost.

I notice now that so far I’ve only spoken of failures as something that happens everyday, perhaps because I’m so used to the idea. But Brian talks about your first failure, which is always the most painful one. That’s an excellent angle, and I’ll definitely write on this topic someday myself.

Your first failure will hurt. Big time. It’ll likely happen during the beginning of your journey, at that long stretch of plateau before you go to the next level. However the moment you experience that failure, the MOMENT you experience that failure, you are stronger than before. It’s only when you go to tackle your goal again that you truly begin to realize it.

You should definitely go and read the whole post yourself, I’m sure you’ll find it useful: Different Way of Looking At Failure.

A friend of mine suggested I read one of recent posts by Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert.

It’s a very interesting and motivational read for anyone who feels how fear of failure keeps them from trying new things and ideas. Scott was never afraid to try his best in any area of his life, no matter how remote from his talent or knowledge it was. The post is called In Over My Head, and it’s a wonderful story of his life so far, aimed to teach us once more: don’t be afraid to fail, cause every time you do – you get one step closer to your success.

In fact, he gives you a formula he had worked out himself over the past years:

… I must confess that I fail miserably about ten times for every one success. (That’s an accurate estimate. I’ve literally kept score.) But interestingly, the failures always involved activities that seemed entirely feasible. I was completely qualified for all of the things that failed. Ironically, I couldn’t even “keep my day job.”

and at the same time, he teaches us to never fear of trying something new:

I mention these stories because over the course of my life, every time I try something different or unlikely, someone says the equivalent of “don’t quit your day job.” When I venture into areas clearly outside of my expertise, I hear “You’re in way over your head.” You’ve probably seen some of those comments in this blog.

Somehow I have to square that seemingly good advice with the fact that I’ve so often been successful against long odds, especially when I’m in way over my head. In fact, that’s when I do my best work. I gave you several examples, but trust me when I say there are plenty more.

Truly, an amazing man and a great story. Go on, read the full story here!

Today I’d like to share with you this brilliantly simple personal development idea: making yourself comfortable.

I would like to talk about two meanings I personally have for this saying in a personal development context.

Productivity

Feeling comfortable about doing something is definitely one of the key factors shaping up the success of each task of yours. Of course, other factors include having enough knowledge to do the task, being in a right mood and physically capable of producing the necessary result and being motivated enough to get started, but if you start analyzing each of these factors, you can really see how most of them can be easily brought under the definition of being comfortable.

Make yourself comfortable – in productivity it means being in the right place at the right time, having enough time and enough motivation, being sure in the positive outcome and having knowledge to back your ambitions up.

If you feel comfortable about doing something, your productivity will only benefit. If you are comfortable with the challenge, you may not even have enough knowledge to tackle it just yet, but feeling comfortable will support you and motivate you when you most need it.

As you can see, with productivity, making yourself comfortable is an essential step. Without feeling comfortable, you will not be able to reach your productivity potential.

Personal development

Another meaning for making yourself comfortable I have is less obvious. In personal development, one of the major areas of your focus is a constant improvement. Many things you can learn and improve by reading additional materials in books or magazines, asking someone for a good friendly advice, or simply getting out there and interacting with all the people you meet on your way.

But it is also widely known, than in many cases the self-growth isn’t about some knowledge or skill which you can obtain by using a direct approach, but rather a pearl of wisdom you may only acquire by doing or not doing other things.

For example, take something work-related. Let’s say, a project management. Yes, there are many wonderful books on the topic, which teach you useful techniques and planning strategies, but any seasoned project manager will tell you that you can read all the books you want and still not be a good project manager, unless and until you start managing some real projects.

This is a perfect example of what I’m trying to say – your project management skills will grow not from reading books and attending lectures on this subject, but by managing things – starting with single tasks and progressing onto bigger projects.

Take another example: a skill of dealing with stressful situations. Again, reading books on this subject will be of some help, as you will probably be more conscious of your feelings next time you’re stressed about something. But this will only be part of the learning curve. If you start getting stressed about everything on purpose, such a direct approach will not make you a master in dealing with stress.

Why? Because you cannot obtain this experience directly. Instead, you have to make sure you use opportunities which come your way to minimize the stress for both yourself and people around you, and to make note of every personal success of yours in this matter.

Only by seeing yourself handling stressful situations progressively easier and more successful, will you finally obtain a feeling of being comfortable enough dealing with any kind of stress.

Personal development is about making yourself comfortable

Making yourself comfortable in personal development is a constant reminder for me.

It’s a guiding star, which shows me how I should improve myself in each of the areas of interest. And the reason I told you earlier that the meaning of making yourself comfortable in personal development is not very obvious is this: your personal development is about making yourself comfortable, not staying comfortable.

As soon as you’ve made yourself comfortable in anything, it is a sign to move on. It is a definite confirmation that you’ve raised above the previously arranged goals, and that you have to set new ones, where you will feel unsure and uncomfortable at start, and concentrate on making yourself comfortable yet again, thus improving the necessary aspects of your personality.

Does this make sense to you? Making yourself comfortable means taking one small step after another, moving towards a clearly defined goal. The more you work on this goal, the more comfortable you’re going to feel. But the idea of personal development is to always remember that there is no end to your self-growth.

If you were not sure about doing something, and you had concentrated on making yourself comfortable, you would eventually end up with greatly improved skills, newly obtained experience and wisdom, and an urge to find the next step in the same direction, which you’re not comfortable with.

The success formula

That’s it for today. The only thing left is to give you this simple “Make Yourself Comfortable” success formula.

1. Concentrate on this step towards your next goal
2. Work towards it till it feels natural and comfortable
3. Repeat the same process starting with step 1.

Of course, it is stating something obvious, but like any fundamental knowledge in any science, it is no revelation – it is just a summarizing interpretation of the experience and knowledge you already have.

Today I’ve failed my driving test for the second time. So no full driving license for me this time, not for another half a year anyway.

Obviously, this failure makes me feel sad, but only a little – luckily, I’m conscious enough about the scale of this failure, and I intentionally choose not to feel miserable and depressed about this, but instead learn a few more valuable lessons and proclaim this day yet another successful failure in my life.

Successful failure? Is there such a thing?!

In case you’re asking yourself the same question, let me assure you right away: of course there is! The truth is, you should treat most of your failures as successes! I do, anyway.

I remember the first time I’ve made a comment about successful failures. It happened earlier this year, and I had just arrived to work. With a visible smile on my face, I announced to my immediate colleague that I had just successfully failed my driving test the other day. He looked both surprised and confused by the controversial terminology and my inadequate positiveness about the whole thing. We then laughed a bit and agreed that I’d probably have a better luck next time around.

I happen to believe that each failure teaches us invaluable lessons, and also – inevitably so – brings us closer to the success. I therefore consider all my failures to be a great source of useful lessons to be learned and applied next time I’m in a similar situation.

Failure to achieve your goal does not have to be depressive. You just have to look for the right signs, and you’ll see for yourself how positive it really is. Well, obviously not as positive as the successful outcome of the situation, but much more useful and positive than you might initially think.

Any failure is a measure of a progress. If you can say you’ve failed in something, this usually means you’ve actually tried some things out and worked rather hard to do your best. And so, your efforts were not futile, albeit not enough to make you absolutely successful this time. It doesn’t mean you didn’t make any progress though!

The more you fail, the less options to fail are left

You see, when you’re working consistently on reaching some goal, and you decide to give it a shot one day and you don’t quite make it, you’re still learning so much in a progress that it brings you one step closer to be truly successful one day.

Apply yourself, make sure you learn from your mistakes – and you’ve got yourself one of the best recipes for success in the long term. Do this consistently, use some planning in addition to it, and you’ll be doing better than 90% of all the people around you!

Once you have a rough idea of how many things could go wrong in achieving something, and you start marking each possible option off by trying it, failing and learning the lessons associated with each failure, you’ll realize that every single failure brings you closer to the top.

Why fail miserably, when you can fail successfully?

Let’s just be honest here. Any kind of failure is tough. And the harder you tried, the bitter it will feel to lose. But it is really important to stop yourself from self-punishment and self-destruction, and instead make an effort and learn all the useful information you possibly can in the view of the outcome you’re left with.

Take me for example: preparing for the driving test, I’ve taken numerous driving lessons over the past few month. I’ve studied the necessary theory, and have become quite confident by consistently making small improvements in my driving technique.

Was it enough? No. What does it tell me? I should probably raise my standards and try harder next time. But how does it make me feel? Immediately, it feels really sad. It is depressing to look back at all this time and money spent to improve my driving to only realize I wasn’t good enough.

So now that I know I’ve failed, where does it leave me? I’ve got two options: fail miserably, or fail successfully. They’re not quite the opposites, but they hopefully show you the difference your point of view can make.

Having failed in anything, a person is naturally depressed. What many of us don’t understand (not for another few days, or sometimes even months of self-punishment) is that there is nothing we can gain from self-tormenting talks and blaming ourselves for not being good, strong or smart enough to accomplish something. All this will do is simply make you feel even worse.

Instead, why not make an effort and learn something useful? Extract some positive and valuable lessons from your situation?

You’ve tried your best and you still failed. Does it mean you won’t be much better next time? Of course it doesn’t. Does it mean you will be absolutely successful? There’s not way to tell. You’ll have to try again to find out.

But what it means for certain is this: you’ve learned one more of your weaknesses, and you’ve got a strong and positive signal that it’s really important for you to improve and get rid of this weakness.

That’s what you should concentrate on! That where all you energy should go instead of being wasted for blaming yourself.

You may not be able to get rid of such a weakness in an overnight, but stay positive and be realistic! Focus on the area for an improvement, and make it your daily routine to improve it by at least a tiny bit. Constantly doing so, you will reach your personal best.

The lesson I want you to learn from today is this: if you fail in anything, fail successfully. There’s no point in doing it any other way.