So you’ve failed in epic fashion. That’s great! Welcome to your initiation into what is likely the largest club on earth. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any successful person that hasn’t had one brutal failure or more. Plainly stated, failure is the foundational building block for any success you are going to have. To quote J.K. Rowling when she was a near-homeless, divorced, single mother with nothing more than a typewriter and an idea, “rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
You’re in Good Company
Don’t believe us that truly successful people have failed in grand fashion over the years? Here’s just a couple of examples from the thousands we could quote.
Abraham Lincoln
Yes, he is remembered for being one of the greatest presidents ever and is credited with being an integral part of the abolition of slavery in America. But did you know that he:
- Lost his first job and his first bid for State Legislature at 23;
- Lost the love of his life, Ann Rutledge, who died when Lincoln was just 26;
- Lost his bid to be Speaker in the Illinois House of Representatives at 29;
- Failed in his bid to be commissioner of the General Land Office in D.C. at 39; and
- He was defeated in his bid to become a U.S. Senator at 49.
Harland Sanders
You know him better for his fast-food franchise, Kentucky Fried Chicken. But before he was a worldwide icon, he:
- Worked odd jobs but couldn’t make a real living doing anything;
- Saved up and bought a hotel and restaurant that was destroyed by fire four months later;
- Owned another restaurant that failed after an interstate route that led past the restaurant was changed; and
- 1,009 restaurants rejected him before one would carry his secret recipe chicken.
Steve Jobs
The founder of Apple was a college dropout, was fired as a tech executive, and was removed from the board of Apple, the company he founded. Of course, that would make anyone want to give up. But here’s what Steve had to say in his 2005 commencement address to Stanford University graduates:
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
Are you getting the idea? You need to embrace failure because it is essential to future success and because failure will make you better.
How to Use Failure to Your Advantage
OK, so you’ve successfully embraced the idea of failure. Hopefully, you’re even to the point that you have a sense of humor about it, which, by the way, is a great way of taking the sting out of failure. So how can you take that failure and use it to your advantage? Here are some tips and suggestions to help you get the most from any epic fail.
Don’t bottle up your frustration.
The first step after failing is to let out any frustration you may have. It’s only normal to grieve your loss and to be angry about it. Let it out. Then you can clear your head and move one. Otherwise, the anger about that failure is going to feel like a gnawing in the back of your mind that you just can’t get rid of.
Be careful that your failure doesn’t cause procrastination.
Failure can cause fear. Fear can lead to procrastination. Procrastination will take you out of your training schedule to the point that you don’t even feel like going back to the gym. At some point, you will just throw in the towel altogether. Instead, force yourself back into the gym once you’ve recovered from the fight and immediately get back to your training schedule.
Don’t let the fear of failing make you fail.
You don’t truly fail until you quit trying. Just because you lost that last match doesn’t mean you are going to do it again. It just means you learned something you didn’t know before. So don’t dwell on your failure. Instead, learn from it and move on.
Look for mentors who can examine your failures with you.
One of the best ways of learning from a failure is to have a second or third set of eyes on it. Too often, we can have blind spots if we are not brutally honest with ourselves as to what caused the failure. A mentor who can review your defeat can give you a fresh perspective that you might not have caught on your own.
Don’t let the emotion of failure override your passion.
It’s easy to quit after a defeat. The sheer devastation of failing repeatedly has taken countless players out of the game. If you are doing what you are passionate about, don’t let repeated failures make you give up. In the famous words of Winston Churchill, “never, ever, ever, give up.” Besides, you’ve already experienced the worst thing that could happen. Why stop now?
Fail Forward
Learn from every setback you have. You can’t stop obstacles from coming into your life, but you can choose how you handle them. Failure can temporarily block your vision. But by persevering and learning from each failure, eventually, you will learn to see the positive in every defeat.
We’re Here For You!
We at The Fight Doctors are here for all of your pre-fight and post-fight needs. Our team of doctors and staff take great pride in your success, and we will do everything in our power to make sure you have every chance to get that win in the ring you are looking for. We are here for you, from our examination packages to meet the qualification requirements before a fight to our inventory of CBD and Delta 8 THC products to help you throughout training and beyond! So book an appointment with us today!
