failure
it's my birthday week! (my dad taught me to do that… to stretch your birthday fun out for a whole week… it really is the best!) and i’m looking back at the past year, as we often do on our birthday…
i think i am feeling particularly reflective this year because last year my birthday was so momentous.
last year on my birthday i launched the kickstarter for my book lighthouse revolution! the kickstarter ended up being a massive success… i nearly doubled my goal with $9198 raised and 150 print books ordered. then i launched the kindle ebook with 1536 books downloaded in the 5 day launch and made it to #1 best seller in all of my categories. i also recorded the audio book, created the companion navigate guidebook, and ran a live ‘book club’ to implement the the ideas in the book.
it was a big year for the lighthouse revolution, accomplishing a long time goal of writing, publishing, and launching a book, not to mention everything else i have created, shared, launched this past year.
it is so important to celebrate your successes, achievements, and wins. not only does it help to keep your light ignited and your vibes high… but it is also an important mindset strategy. celebrating success trains your brain to believe that you are worthy and deserving of success.
but what do you do about all the failures?
what do you do about that list of things that didn’t work out or go well or get anywhere… those dreams you started the year with that fizzled or flopped.
sometimes even all the success in the world can’t take away the pain of the one thing you failed at, or fucked up.
here’s what i am learning to do to as a strategy to deal with failure...
give everything you do, try, share, offer, or explore more than one purpose.
there is always the obvious purpose… for instance if you’ve created an offer to sell you have the purpose of earning money. if you’ve created a free opt-in you have the purpose of building your list. if you’ve filmed a youtube video you have the purpose of people watching that video! you’re probably tracking your sales, your list size, your views.
but what i am learning about me is that if that is my only purpose… or even if that is my primary purpose… it is so easy to feel like you’ve failed if you don’t meet your goal.
i need to give my efforts a bigger purpose than the obvious one.
perhaps my offer has the purpose of reminding people about my zone of genius, what i can help them with or the difference i can make. perhaps i can test out my wording or my imagery to see if it resonates. perhaps i can practice making the offer so that it feels authentic and fun and aligned. perhaps i can push out of my comfort zone and make my offer in new places. perhaps i can give myself the space to be creative, to brainstorm, to try out new things that might become part of my biz model.
if i can give what i do a primary purpose like that then i will still have accomplished so much even if i don’t make the sale, or get views, or get subscribers, or whatever else is the obvious purpose.
one of my strengths is creating things and getting them out there. i have overcome my old perfectionist tendencies and i am pretty good now at overcoming my fear, which means that i’m good at taking action and taking the leap and just making shit happen.
but my challenge is that if the stuff i create/ share/ offer ‘flops’ (i get crickets, no one buys, no one cares) i feel like i’ve failed… it knocks me right down, and i can get into a discouraged place… this place of ‘nothing ever lands’ and ‘maybe i should just give up.’
i always manage to bounce back, thanks to all of the self-leadership tools i have in my back pocket. but i also recognize that this pattern needs to change… i don’t want to keep taking that downward spiral where all i can see is lack.
one way i am trying to shift that pattern it is to give my efforts a bigger purpose. something that can’t flop: something like learning or noticing or exploring or testing or practicing or stretching.
that way, no matter what happens, it’s still a win.
there is still something to celebrate.
don’t get me wrong. a failure still hurts. it’s hard not to meet your goal. i think back to that kickstarter and i’m so very grateful to the 140 backers who made it such a huge success... and i am really proud of myself too. but what if i had failed? what if i hadn’t met my goal? it would have hit me hard, i know it... i wouldn’t feel proud of myself for having given it a go, i would just feel like a failure.
that’s why i want to shift that pattern. i don't want 'rock bottom' to be my go to place!
and you know, i think it’s not even about having strategies to ‘deal with failure’... it’s about finding ways to make failure not even a thing any more.
to find the successes in every effort. and to let those successes… even the small ones… be the foundation blocks we keep building on instead of letting so-called failures become wrecking balls that knock us down.
so that's my new strategy - giving my efforts a bigger purpose than the obvious, so that failure doesn't exist.
how about you? how do you turn your failures into wins? what purpose can you give your efforts so that failure won’t even exist?
join us in the elevate circle where our theme in april is to #keeprising. we’ll be learning actionable strategies (practical, mindset, and energetic) to build resilience and tenacity. we’ll look at how to deal with the common stumbling blocks that knock us down like failure, criticism, comparison, and more. elevate is truly my most favourite place in the online space to hang out – incredible members, helpful strategies, inspiring action-taking…. we are there together doing the inner work AND the outer work to take our business to new levels. i’ve got a special 10 month membership on offer right now, and a special 1:1 biz coaching + elevate package as well, pop over to have a look and let me know if you have any questions about elevate. i would so love to help you keep rising. xo