Fail! – 5 Lessons We Can Learn From Failure.

Failure…it’s not a word anyone wants to hear or say, but it happens to the best of us. But the deal is, when we fail, then what? Do we wallow in self pity? Do we stay angry at the failed situation? Or do we change it from a failure to a lesson, or lessons, learned? Following are 5 lessons we can learn from failure.

I want to discuss how we can all take the third option, learning lessons, by sharing one of my own failures and the 5 lessons we can all learn from failure. All of us can change our failures into lessons, when we change the way we look at those ‘failures’.

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I made a big change:

So back in July, 2016, I made a big decision and moved by myself and my two dogs to Colorado, to be near my future husband. That in itself was a big deal for me, as I had only lived in and around my hometown of Auburn, California all my life. But it was time to make a big change, and moving to Colorado was the start. Besides, change is good!

I saw a new opportunity:

Finding work and settling in took some time, but I did eventually find some part time work. As I began to make this new town my home, I noticed there was not any dance studios, theater, or other arts for kids in this little town. So I thought, I should open a studio! I had experience in teaching dance; I’d run and directed a young adult community theater for 8 years; and I had a degree in dance. I could do this!

I started a new business:

I found a small space I could rent by the hour above a local art gallery. I met a few moms and found a few dance students. It was slow, but word began to get out. In the meantime, the moms were asking me if I could teach yoga for them. Hummmm….sure. Why not? So I invested a few thousand dollars, went through yoga teacher training for 4 months, traveling back and forth to California and finally became a certified yoga teacher.

While I was going through the training, an opportunity came up to rent a commercial space in town full time. I decided to go for it! It meant a real, dedicated space for my dance and yoga students that I could make my own. I could create a wonderful studio that would surely attract more students. I was sure the investment would be worth it.

I created my own dance/yoga studio.

So I spent thousands of dollars to purchase mirrors, flooring, barres, yoga equipment, etc plus all the renovating of the rental space. But it was exciting to think that I would have my own studio. (note the starry eyes… 😉 ) People would fall in love with my studio, with me! If I could just make the studio look perfect; have wonderful organization and details; put up flyers and facebook posts, I was sure I’d start getting a following.

It was a slow start.

Well, in the first month I gained 40 new yoga students and a few more dance students. Wahoo! It’s going to work. But then…those new yoga students didn’t show up. Class after class was empty or maybe one person. I still had a few dance students, but even those classes were smaller with fewer students. But I told myself, ‘It’s summer. I’m sure everyone is just on vacation or enjoying their time off’.

I continued the silence of no students.

Then September and back-to-school came. This will be the big boost I was needing. So I put up more flyers around town. Contacted local schools to share what I was trying to do for the kids in the community. More facebook posts and advertising… but nothing….crickets….not even the dance students I had previously returned after summer. Here I am with this amazing dance and yoga space, but no students to share it with.

I just needed to hang on.

It had been 5 months since I opened, not too long, so I figured I just needed to hang on and it would work. I still believed I was helping the community, providing a needed service. But I began to look at my bottom line; the huge debt and nothing coming in. And monthly expenses on top of it. I hung on for 4 more months, hoping and hoping my fate would change. Hoping that people would start to see the amazing studio they had right in their hometown.

But finally, 9 months and thousands of dollars later, I had to come to the conclusion that this studio was not going to work, that the people in the town were not interested in what I had to offer. I had to close the studio and ask my landlord if there was a way to get out of my lease. Thankfully, after only one month, he found another renter and I was off the hook for the lease.

My dream crashed and I failed!

My big dreams of owning my own studio went crashing down. I had failed! And the sting of not making the studio work, the loss of money and the loss of some self-esteem was awful. There were all the self-doubting questions running through my head. What did I do wrong? Why didn’t it work? Was it me? Why did I even try this silly idea?….and on and on.

But then I began to look at the ‘failure’ differently. I had not failed. I had courageously tried a new venture. Something I had never done before, especially by myself. I learned I was strong and had more courage than I thought. I also learned some important lessons. Hopefully, the following list of 5 lessons I learned from my failure will give you some thoughts and ideas on how to deal with failure and hopefully apply some of them to your life.

The 5 Lessons We Can Learn From Failure.

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1. Not trying is worse than failing.

The first of the 5 lessons we can learn from failure is reminding ourselves that not trying is worse than failing. Fear can be a great enemy to trying something new. We are afraid of change. We are afraid we will look silly. We are afraid we will fail. But there is a fate worse than failure….it’s regret. Failures and mistakes are just bumps in the road; opportunities for learning; platforms for change. They are temporary.

But regret can be the black cloud that you can’t seem to shake. Regret is something that stays with you. You cannot go back and learn from something you never did. Regret cannot be changed, but mistakes allow for change. A famous quote by John Greenleaf Whittier sums up the problem of regret.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.”  ― John Greenleaf Whittier

2. Be Honest and know your true reasons for a new venture.

If you are starting a new venture and you’ve pushed past the fear of trying, (Yay you!) you also have to ask yourself why you are doing it. Be honest with yourself. There isn’t really a wrong answer, if you are being honest. If you are doing it to fulfill a lifelong dream, that’s great. If you are doing it completely for uplifting your own image, that’s fine, as long as you own that reason.

If you are truly doing it for others, that’s awesome, but make sure it will be accepted by those people you say you are trying to help. I know for me, I thought I was opening this studio for the town, but I really didn’t look to see if the town actually wanted it. That was my lesson learned which leads me to my next point.

3. Know Your Audience or Target Market.

If you are starting a new business venture, make sure you do your research on your audience or market first. Take time to ask a lot of people. Maybe do some polls in the newspaper; maybe go to a city planning meeting to get feedback from local officials who know the town; maybe join some community groups to get a feel for what the town really needs.

If you jump in blindly, (like I did) you may be jumping into an empty pool, a non-existent market. So the lesson here is, do your research first before spending thousands of dollars on your new idea. Don’t get so excited about your new project that you throw wisdom and caution out the window. Yes, be excited, but be smart too.

4. Failure can also be a ‘checking off the box’ life event.

I had always dreamed of teaching dance in my own studio. I never wanted a huge space, but because I loved dance so much, it seemed a natural way to share. And now I can say I did it! I can stop thinking about the ‘what if’ and instead, move it to the ‘been there, done that’ column.

Even though a venture doesn’t work out the way we may hope, we can at the very least, check it off our list of things we’ve always wanted to try. We can pat ourselves on the back that we did not let fear stop us and now we can move on to a new goal or dream without the baggage of regret!

5. We are our own worst critic.

When we resist trying something new because of the fear of failure, one of the fears associated with failure is the fear of what other people will think of us if we fail. We believe others, especially friends and family, will look down on us, or criticize us for not doing x,y,z, or criticize for trying it in the first place.

But the fact is, that fear of what others may think is not true. This fear of what others think is really a reflection of what we think and how we criticize ourselves. In reality, others, especially our friends and family, are our biggest supporters. And when we do fail, or like I’d rather call it, learn lessons, they still support us. They come alongside us with understanding and even help sometimes.

But even if those supporters did turn into naysayers…. so what. What we think of ourselves is still more important than what others may or may not think of us. Be your own cheerleader. Never speak negative about yourself…outloud or in your mind. Instead, turn that ‘failure’ into an opportunity to affirm your awesomeness.

• “I was courageous, despite my fears”.
• “I stepped out of my comfort zone, and did something different.”
• “I gave it my all and that means it was a success.”
• “I didn’t just ‘try’…I made it happen!”
• “I did not fail. I made room for another goal, another dream to achieve.”
• What other affirmations can you remind yourself?

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” — Vince Lombardi

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There are many lessons we can learn from our tried attempts, our lack of successes, our failures, and our mistakes. These were just 5 lessons we can learn from failure. However, the biggest lesson is to not let that mistake or failure stop you from trying even harder on your next goal or dream or project. Remember, you are not a failure or a mistake maker…you are a lesson learner!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the post, anything you learned or appreciated or even a ‘failure’ you overcame and learned from. Leave a comment and let’s talk!

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