# 7 Fail Forward: How to turn missteps into growth
Integrating Failure’s Lessons for Positive Evolution
We all fail; it’s part of life. Sometimes we fail big and sometimes we fail small. I’ve personally failed a lot. I’ve gone big and failed hard, and those experiences have made me the person I am today.
I’ve built my resilience and learned how to fail forward. I can go out into the world, do my thing, and ground into my knowing that I will be okay no matter what. When we fail forward, we are able to withstand the impacts of day-to-day life and are set up to navigate, integrate, and move forward in the event of a larger disruption.
If you want to expand into all that is meant for you, learning to fail forward is essential.
From Clichés to Self-Compassion
You may have heard things throughout your life like: “fall down 7 times, get up 8,” “the road to success is paved with failure,” or “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
But, how do we manage failure and bounce back in a healthy and generative way?
A soft landing is essential for our mental health and success in the long-term. If each time we fail, we land hard in self doubt or don’t know how to get back up again, we chip away at our confidence, our willingness to try again, and our ability to learn and grow. While we can’t control how the world treats us, we can control our inner world. We can learn to treat ourselves with kindness, integrate our failures, and level up.
We can start by creating a safety net. Creating a safety net is one part working with our personal ecosystem, one part how we set ourselves up knowing failure will come, and one part having supportive people in our lives who have our back.
Failing Forward as a Personal Resilience Practice
When our personal ecosystem is wired to fail forward, it means we can make mistakes, fall down, and maintain positive self-regard. We have the inner knowing that we are enough. We have the capacity to try again, try differently, or try something else and make headway another day. We learn from our failures and move forward, having grown because of them.
When we do the internal work, we can fail forward.
Part of growing our inner capacity for failing forward is about exploring how we’ve failed in the past, how we felt when we failed, and how things looked in the wake of our failure. Understanding our patterns around failure can be an empowering tool for growth and success.
There have been times in the past when I’ve failed and interpreted the experience as a value judgment on my character, that I was a failure. My failures used to touch my deepest wound. I’d picked up the false belief in childhood that my accomplishments and my self worth were inextricably linked. While this kind of motivation led me to accomplish a lot in my life, it was often a painful, vicious cycle. The good news is, we can intervene in these cycles and access motivation beyond the critical voice.
Have you ever felt that no matter what you did you were never good enough, productive enough, special enough? That if you just did this one thing, you would feel okay?
It’s a trap. Once I unpacked what was happening for me and dove in to heal the root of my wound, my inner knowing of my own inherent value grew, and things changed for me. The stories of others weren’t as loud and my own voice became stronger. I was more able to fail and feel okay, feel that I was enough even with my failure, and try again another day with my confidence intact.
Critics and Observers: External Voices of Failure
Somewhere in the process of healing this part of myself, I was exposed to another side of failure — what other people think. There are people who are allergic to failure. If they witness your failure, they tend to let you know (in one way or another) that what you did was not okay. Chances are they don’t have the capacity to be brave in their own lives.
Brené Brown puts it well: “If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their own lives, but will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those of us trying to dare greatly…”
People tend to sling at others what they haven’t healed in themselves. And, there are conscious people out there who can see their own pain, however unhealed, and avoid projecting that onto others—these people are on the healing path.
Our self worth doesn’t have to be inextricably linked to our accomplishments. Yes, it’s natural to feel let down or disappointed and it’s important to honor these feelings and allow them to move. However, we can bounce forward knowing we are capable and competent.
How we feel about our failures differs from person to person. Perhaps your self-worth stays intact, but the fall-out from the failure creates challenging circumstances. Sometimes failure shows us we need to learn a new skill, acquire knowledge, or regulate our nervous system so our anxiety or fear isn’t leading us.
Whatever our flavor of failure, there is a pattern to how we each fail. We can discover where we can grow our capacity by exploring our failure patterns. What happens leading up to, during, and after a failure? And how did those phases feel? If we ask ourselves these questions, we can pinpoint areas for growth, seek out support, and walk down the healing path to failing forward.
How to Fail Forward: Self-Awareness and Support
Sometime last year, I was going back and forth with my mentor about the details of a presentation I’d soon be giving for an organization that I had put WAY up high on a pedestal.
One day, noticing my unproductive rumination, he said to me, “If you are going to fail, fail early so we can go to lunch.”
Um! Okay! His humor stopped me in my tracks and shook me out of my neuroses. What he meant by “fail early” was, essentially, get over it. Do it this way or that way, it doesn’t matter just do it and move on. I loved this! It swiftly took this organization off the pedestal and helped me feel relaxed and spacious.
Pressure can build when we prepare to do something that feels big for us. Sometimes the pressure comes from within and sometimes from other people and circumstances. In my case, I had created the pressure myself.
When I pedestalized this organization, I set myself up to give that presentation from a place of fear and disembodiment. Have you ever spoken publicly or done something outside your comfort zone and you don’t remember a word you said or even really what happened? That happens when we leave our body to get the job done. This kind of dissociation can go one of two ways— it can flop altogether or go seemingly well. While it may have been successful in the eyes of others, if we weren’t present chances are our magic didn’t shine through like it could have. Also, we typically have what I like to call a vulnerability hangover. Our nervous system was so dysregulated that we now need time to recover.
Relieving Pressure, Nurturing Presence
How can we set ourselves up for less pressure? Here are a few inroads.
I’ve learned that easing up on ourselves necessitates a regulated nervous system. Are we already underwater and then going out on a limb, or are we grounded, feeling solid, and supported and moving from there? We can get there with breath, stretching, meditation, proactively scheduling a session with a coach or healer.
It can also be supportive to set intentions. If we go into a situation with impossible expectations, we are setting ourselves up to fail. Can we set conscious intentions in terms of what we were hoping for instead of just hoping to “succeed?” Does the situation call for setting an optional stretch intention, or is it a very new experience and call for an intention that feels more comfortable?
We can mindfully prepare. Let’s set ourselves up with time, space, and knowledge on our side. Cutting corners and trying to cram it all in is sure to intensify the situation and is unfriendly to our nervous system.
We can set ourselves up with a calming and nurturing environment. Do we feel resourced in our home or office space? How can we set up our environment in a supportive way, be it cleaning our house, lighting a candle, or posting grounding quotes in our office?
How we set ourselves up is important to failing forward. However, sometimes we don’t have the luxury of our preferred jumping off point and we have to make a move anyway.
Failure is not something we can excise from our lives through control; rather, it’s an inevitable experience for which we can design a safe landing.
Our Support System: The People Who Catch Us When We Fall
When we do the internal work to support ourselves and to be open to receive support from others, we create space in our lives for a supportive community to flourish.
When we are personally resilient, we magnetize a generative support network to us. It’s so important for our mental health and wellbeing to be a part of a workplace, community, and home environment that supports and encourages us. When we are resilient and have cultivated a fail-forward mindset, our friends, partners, and colleagues are a safe place for our vulnerability.
When we’re anchored in a caring support network, we can fail and it won’t be catastrophic. We won’t be fired, cut off, or dismissed by our loved ones. We can go out on a limb, taking calculated risks knowing that others have our back. Our vulnerability is celebrated. We model failing forward to our people, which in turn encourages their vulnerability and healthy risk-taking.
Failing forward is essential to building personal resilience. Failure is inevitable, so let’s set ourselves up to fail forward by empowering ourselves to…
Take risks so we can grow into our full potential
Create a soft landing when we fall, to the best of our ability
Cultivate a healthy support system
Resource ourselves with grounding techniques
Recover when things don’t go as we hoped
Learn from our mistakes and try again a different day
How has failing forward supported your evolution? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.