It’s unsurprising for kids these days to feel pressure about their performance in school. This also manifests among adults who feel pressure when they don’t succeed in their workplaces or homes. This is even more difficult for people pursuing their dreams. When you fail once, it’s frustrating to keep trying. However, kids need to learn how to live through failure. It’s an inevitable part of life and experiencing it shouldn’t not pump the brakes on people’s goals. Whether trying to pass exams or becoming better at a sport, learning how to fail forward is one of the best ways to stay on course.
Getting caught up in perfectionism means you miss the lessons from failure. Children don’t just need to experience their failures, they need to learn from the adults around them. For every great success story, there is a lot of failure involved on the path there. This helps kids learn that failure isn’t something to be avoided or frightened of.
Normalising failure for people helps them remain resilient when they’re working towards their goals. When children are working to advance their education, they feel undue pressure for their end-of-school exams and feel like the world will end if they don’t pass any of them. With an increased number of students and college placements seeming more scarce, school seems like a pressure cooker. According to Forbes, children need to know that the most important life lessons don’t come from winning but from learning how to play.
Why You May Not Be Learning From Failure And How To Weaponise It For Your Success
How to fail forward
Whether it’s at a kindergarten level or a Fortune 500 company, failure will happen no matter how many fail-safes there are. The concept of failing forward is best studied by John C Maxwell in his book, Failing Forward which outlines practical strategies to learn from success. When you experience failure, you need to keep these steps in mind.
1. Don’t blame
When you experience failure, avoid blaming language. While some mistakes do happen due to human error, placing direct blame on people who made honest mistakes makes them more likely to operate on fear in the future. The same applies to children. When they fail an exam or get a part in a school play, that isn’t time to hammer home how they aren’t good enough. Making people correlate failure with fear makes them less likely to try.
2. Remember failures repeat
Psychologists John Krumboltz and Ryan Babineaux’s book, Fail Fast Fail Often also outlines how to revel in being a loser. The more you try, the more you are likely to fail. Failures are frequent even for the most elite athletes. But the more you try, the higher your chances of success.
Slow Down – Don’t Wear Out Your Body & Mind While Trying To Be Successful
3. Don’t rush to fix things
When kids experience failure, don’t rush to fix things. Protecting them from failure doesn’t help them learn. Don’t shield yourself from your mistakes either. When you make a mess, take some time to process. Don’t damage what’s around you in a fit of rage or wallow in regret and refuse to try again. But also, don’t try to make a quick fix so that you don’t have to think about failure. Failing forward means letting the failure marinate so you can learn the most you can out of it.
4. Don’t let failure determine your self-worth
When your kids experience failure, watch out for language like “I’m a loser”, “I never do anything right”, “why bother?”, “why am I like this?” Negative self-talk often accompanies experiences of failure. Failing doesn’t make you a failure, it just makes you someone who tried.
5. Build confidence to take more chances
When you fail, you learn how that one strategy didn’t work. This then means you know better the next time you try. You can also do it the same way knowing where you went wrong and this time you’ll work it out. When you fail, you know what not to do and what to avoid. This gives you better knowledge of what to do when you try to meet your goals. For your kids, they internalise these lessons better for next time. They can even know which areas are their weakest in different subjects and they know they need to study them more. You can also learn to step outside your comfort zone to achieve your goals.
Why The Fear Of Failure Should Not Stop You From Trying
6. Make failing safe
To fail forward means to work towards your goals already aware that failure exists. When you have a kid trying new things or getting ready for exams, they need to know that they have a failure-safe space. Whether you’re a manager or a parent, you need to have an environment where failures are discussed and diagnosed rather than punished. Even when the failures happen because of negligence, you’re better off letting that employee go rather than berating them. Being in an environment that chooses to foster learning rather than punishing equips you for success better.
7. Let yourself experiment
Failure can make you gun-shy. But you can’t prevent yourself from trying new ways to accomplish the goals you seek. For example, if your child is struggling with algebra one way, they can learn how to do it a different way. Think of it as finding different ways to fail forward. It gets you closer to your goal. This also allows collaboration, learning from others, and learning outside your comfort zone. For example, if you’re creating a recipe that keeps failing, you can look up how other chefs have dealt with similar failures and how they succeeded in finally making that dish.
Risk-Taking For Personal Growth And Success
8. Don’t wait for perfection
Waiting for the opportune moment to start something is just procrastination. There is never a perfect moment. You should just start your objectives and work on your goals no matter what. An opportune moment doesn’t protect you from failure. But starting immediately puts you on a path to fail forward and even sooner, success.
9. Measure small steps in progress
Instead of waiting for a big success run, measure the strides you take and be proud of them. When it comes to your kids, see how they succeed with smaller projects like homework or athletic events. If they’re struggling with a math problem and they do a practice test with questions about it, let them enjoy making progress in and passing such tests. This is a great way to apply the principles of failing forward. You can’t plan for failure and you can’t guarantee success but you can still celebrate small wins or the time you spend working on your goals.
Why We Need To Stop Romanticizing Suffering As The Only Pathway To Success
Check out:
7 Mistakes That Make New Habits Fail
5 Life Hacks You Can Learn From Children
Why You Are Losing Your Motivation And What You Can Do To Regain It
Why You May Not Be Learning From Failure And How To Weaponise It For Your Success
Why The Fear Of Failure Should Not Stop You From Trying
6 Practical Tips On What To Do And Not Do If You Feel Like Your Life Is Going Nowhere
