Today I am discussing how to get over failure and back to living your life !
In this episode I discuss how:
Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/failure
Today I am discussing how to get over failure and back to living your life !
In this episode I discuss how:
Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/failure
[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. I hope you are well. And if not, I got you. At least you are here. So as I am recording this, it's actually about to be Easter tomorrow for those of you who may celebrate it. So we have a very nice long weekend that I am enjoying, but I always love recording my podcasts, so here we are. So today I wanted to talk about failure. It's been coming up a lot with some of my clients, a little bit around, some of my thoughts with my business. But I actually have a completely different view and perspective on failure. And I want to explain it to you as I think it's going to help you all. They're out there conceptualize failure as well. So like how to get over failure, like what is failure? So if you do like a Google search, failure is literally defined as like a lack of a lack of success or you haven't met an expectation. That's what failure is defined as. And my definition is that is a bullshit and failure isn't a real concept. It's made up by humans. So hear me out here. Why do I see failure with my clients? And just just everyone and people around me is we have, for example, set a goal. We haven't met that goal. So we set a goal to make 50 K and we make only 25 K. And that could be viewed as a failure because you haven't met like it's a lack of success in the sense that you didn't meet that expectation, you didn't meet it.
[00:01:49] Therefore, you have failed. But that is determined by your thoughts and how you view the situation. You could also view it as, Oh my God, I made 25 K Wow. And I talk about this a lot more, a lot more in my goal setting episode around how to view goals. And I think this relates in really well because we view failure. It's such an icky gross thing that people really don't want to touch like this failure. Fear of failing is what keeps us stuck from not going out there to achieve our dreams and do the things we want to do. All because we're worried we're fat. We will fail. When I say we will fail, I don't actually believe failure is a feeling. I actually believe that we have thoughts and feelings around the quote unquote failure. I believe when we think failure has happened, we have we berate ourselves. We shame ourselves. We tell ourselves like, why did you ever think, even think to dream of the stars? Like, Look what you've done, you failed. You suck. We have all these bad thoughts that pop up. We feel depressed, ashamed of ourselves, and it brings up all this shit for us. That's why we're afraid of, again, quote, unquote, failure, not because of the failure itself, but how we will think about ourselves when we think we have failed. That's what I mean. When failure is made up, it's all in your fucking heads.
[00:03:22] Seriously, like in my business, ever since I've started life coaching and, you know, my mindset and stuff like that, I noticed I have never seen any failures in my business. None. Now have I at times been like, Oh fuck, am I failing? I'm sucking. Yeah, of course, of course I've done that. But I've never at any point in my even my life weirdly have gone, Oh yeah, I failed at that. I shouldn't have done that at the time maybe. But then looking back on it, it's always been like, well, if this never happened, then it would have never, never led me down this road over here, etc.. And that's, that's the same with my business. I'm fucking learning the shit. Like the reason I don't see failure is because I am self compassionate with myself. I am nice to myself if I don't meet my goal by the end of the year, that's okay. I'm not going to be a shit about it. It's not a failure. I know that I'm going to make something, create something, and that's good enough. That's great. Therefore I haven't failed. I fucking tried. That's why I don't believe failure exists. Let me elaborate this on this again, because I know there's probably some questions out there. Hear me out here. I think of animals and my dog doesn't like shit on the carpet and then think it's failed, if that makes sense. And it doesn't even shame itself for it.
[00:04:51] Like it does feel ashamed because of obviously my reaction because I'm like, no, I don't shit on the carpet, but like think of animals in the wild. They're not out there thinking that they have failed. They're just being they're just doing. If they, I don't know, a hunting something, they miss the hunt, okay? They move along and they they go somewhere else and try again. They're not sitting there, but. Right. Well, I don't exactly know what animals are thinking in their head, but they're not necessarily berating themselves super depressed because they missed that hunt and have to go like somewhere else here. I just think it's so interesting how I don't we don't see this with animals, but with humans, with our very complex brains. I see it all the time. This fear, utter dread of failing. And it is made up because what you perceive as a failure, someone else is perceiving as a win or it doesn't even matter to them. There are people like I'm using a coaching example. There are coaches out there who are making, you know, millions of dollars. And a failure for them might be, I don't know, making ten K in a month. That would be like a win for me. That'd be great. So again, that their failure is like my success. It's dependent on perception and again, it's how you choose to see it. That's what it comes up to. If you choose to see something as a failure, yeah, you're going to see it as a failure.
[00:06:26] If you choose to see something as something like, Yeah, I've tried, I've done my best, which is why I don't believe it's true. Now alternatively you're going to say to me, but what about, for example, I've used this in my head as well. Say you've invested like 100 K to business and you lose it all and it just it closes. It ends like. Isn't that a failure? Sure. In your mind. If you are thinking that is a failure, if you are choosing to give up, if you are choosing to say, Hey, I'm stopping, this is too much, I have failed you again are defining that. Now some of you might be like, but that is a massive thing. Like that's a massive risk. And they lost. They failed. Yeah. But let's look at it like shares. I invest in shares and this is how I see failure, right? What I want you to do, look up any type of shit, like frickin anything, like Dow Jones index or something. And I want you to look at it over a longer time period like that's been going on for like decades. Right? It has gone up continuously going up. Then I want you to scroll like take a year and take like, I don't know, take time or take a look at some of the recessions or something and just zoom in to like a couple of months and just see the fucking volatility. But overall, it's gone up.
[00:07:50] It's succeeded. That's humans and that's life. Yeah, that example I gave of the person losing all their money in the business, that is like a massive dip in the market and everyone freaks the fuck out. They're like, Oh my God, there's a dip. We are failing. But then again, you know, I've got to go into details around shares here. Things change, things go back up to normal and they increase. You can bounce back. And I know that's a lot of people might be like, whoa, what? You can know straight away. It's like, okay, let's go do this again. Yeah, maybe you stop. Maybe you reassess your life, you figure some stuff out, and then maybe you take a different direction and you try again. Thought failure. That's a dip in the share market. That's seriously that's how I see it and that's how I choose to see it with my business. Now, am I saying that when we go we ignore failure and we don't ignore the feelings around failure? Because do I still like I'm a fucking human first, a coach second, of course my brain is like, Oh my God, this fucking failed. And I need to process the emotions associated with that. And that's totally fine. But when you can view yourself with loving and kind and self compassionate eyes, when you can view yourself almost like a child who is learning how to walk and is getting really frustrated. But you're just sitting there watching in their corner like, I know you can do it.
[00:09:19] You're got to it's there's no failure. There's just living. That's it. I'm just living. I'm just choosing to live my life right now, to coach, to be an analyst, to be with my partner, to create a wholesome life for myself. I'm not seeing failure. I'm seeing events. I'm seeing a share market. I'm seeing ups and downs and emotions sometimes. But when I scroll all the way out and I am really early on in my life, I know it's just going to keep going up. I'm going to have a lot of bumps in the way, but it's just going to keep growing up and it's all around how you define it. So one is you need to redefine if you want to get over failure, fucking redefine it. It's not real. I don't believe it's real. That also doesn't mean we don't reassess our work. That doesn't mean we go, Oh, it's fine. I don't want to look at my work again or reassess how I can improve it or something like that. Like, say, you create, I don't know, a webinar and no one comes to it like, okay, you can choose to see that as failure, or you can choose to be like, Hey, I did a webinar, that's really cool. Now you can problem solve it. How do I get more people to come? Do I need to do more marketing, etc.? Like. Yeah. Again, it's I don't see it as a failure because I see it.
[00:10:42] I see it's like the half glass full. That's what it is. That's what I'm doing. I'm just choosing to see it. Half glass full. All right. And how do I just take that to the next level? And you're doing it in a nice way. You're not berating yourself or being a dick to yourself about it, like, oh my God, no one came. So shit, no one likes me. You're like, okay, I did a thing. I expected this. I didn't really get that. Okay, where's the gap? Where's the gap in the learning? What do I need to do? Totally different energy mindset, etc. Redefine failure for yourself, for me and this works for me and it's okay. I totally respect that it might not work for everyone else. I don't believe failure exists. There's no failure. I kind of like fail forward. But again I in my is always like, no, no, there's no such thing because failure is defined by a person's thoughts in their head. And my failure is someone else's success. Like what? Like it's all thoughts go really deep with it. I'm like, animals don't think they're failing. They're just living like we're all just living. I get very, very, like, meta about it, so I just choose to not believe that it exists. Do I still get shitty about it? Of course I do. But I encourage you if you're listening, redefine what you make failure mean because what you're very likely doing.
[00:12:02] When I used to fail before coaching, guess what? I was making it mean. I was making it mean something shit about myself. That's what I. That's why I was so afraid of failure. That's why so many people are so afraid of stepping outside their own boundaries that they've created because, god forbid, they fail. It's not the failing. It is not the failing that they are afraid of. It is the thoughts that they will have when they fail. It is how you will talk to yourself. It is how you will treat yourself. And your brain is like, Fuck that, we're not doing that. Stay in the safe area. It's going to feel uncomfortable naturally, because, yeah, you're doing something new and your brain's like, The fuck is this? Don't, don't do the new thing. I like the routine. You're doing this new thing. I do not like it. That's normal. And if there's an intense fear of. But what if I fail? Ask yourself, what are you making it mean about yourself? What does it mean if you do fail? Why does it matter? For me it was I'm not good enough. And God, do I see that so commonly I'm not good enough. It's proof. It's this fear that I do it. I fail. Here's more evidence for my brain. Fuck that. Seriously. You already have a ton of evidence that you're not good enough. Trust me, you've got it all in the back of your head. Your negative bias is all in there.
[00:13:22] Like, I've got a ton of evidence. Like, you're just. Just like, in my head sometimes I'm like, Whoa. I'm like, What? What am I afraid of? I'm just going to add it to the backlog of negative thoughts that I have. Like, I'll give you this example, right? Say, and I think I've used this before, I do not know anything about cars, I don't care about them as in like I'll drive them and stuff. But, you know, taking care of them, maintenance just I'm don't have absolutely no idea. Right but say for whatever reason I wanted to just give it a go, give building cars a go, you know, so I'm building a car and I don't doubt I would be absolutely failing all the time. I'd be, you know, making mistakes, not knowing where to put the I don't know, wheels and stuff like that. But when I think about it like that, right, I'm not going to take it seriously because the activity that I'm doing, I don't care about. Actually, I could have used a better example. Baking. I love baking desserts, but I'm not fussy. I'm not the type of person that's like, Oh no, this was too bitter or something. Like, as long as it's not burnt, then it's like, Great job I did. I did amazing. It was a great job. I did not burn the food. So when and that's because I'm not putting all my self worth and value on the cake that I'm baking or the car that I'm making.
[00:14:52] But when you were attributing everything your essence to this business, this new project, whatever it is, and you are using that to determine your self worth, whether you are good enough and can make it in life and you're lovable, etc. Yeah. When you do quote unquote fail, all those thoughts are going to pop up and hit you like a ton of bricks. That is why talk about this all the time in some previous episodes around like workaholism and stuff, separating yourself, detaching yourself from the activity, like detaching your self worth, etc. is so important because then you can live like you allow yourself to live. You will again quote unquote fail and you won't make it mean anything about yourself. You're not going to have all those mean, nasty, horrible thoughts about you. You're just going to be like, I fucking try to thing. Cool. Like, I went out there and I fucking did it. That's awesome. I have built a whole business by myself. That's a big achievement. I view that as an achievement. I don't view the fact that I haven't hit certain goals is bad. It's just, okay, we got to try some new things. We've got. We've got to live. We've got to experiment. That's way more fun than, Oh, my God, I failed. And I'm going to now berate myself and have a pity party where I'm sitting there upset. Do I still do that? Of course I do.
[00:16:36] I'm fucking human, but I know how to coach myself out of it. I know how to process my emotions as well. And yes, you know the title. You know what I always say if you're a regular listener here, it's also about processing the emotions as well. Yes, you can work to redefine it. And obviously, of course, working on your thoughts about how you're making that external thing mean something about you really important. But guess what? You're human and failure is going to come up and you're going to think it's failure, and then you're going to either, yeah, you're going to use it against yourself. You got to really be with those emotions. I've been doing a lot of that recently, especially when it comes to I'm doing some new things in my business. I'm learning a whole heap of new things and my brain loves to just be like, All right, this new thing. Yeah, you should know it in like a day. Take 30 years of marketing and selling training. Know it in a day, which is like no brain. That's not how it works. And I have to experiment a lot and do new things. And I've had to do a lot of just sitting there noticing where I'm at, being uncomfortable, letting it sit there. It's not fun. I do not appreciate it. And guess what? If I can dissipates, it doesn't go away completely. It comes in for me, it comes in waves. And again, it's different for everyone.
[00:18:01] But guess what? I was able to get through it. I was able to learn a new skill. It was able to strengthen my emotional processing muscle. I was able to ride the wave and I was able to move forward. The way I see humans is humans are the only ones, the only things on the planet that create arbitrary rules for themselves. And yes, I can go on and on about how that's from society, upbringing and stuff like that, etc. But we create rules and then we kind of live our life in these rules. We don't necessarily like to step outside that. Yes, there are rules. Again, there's a whole heap of theories, evolution, cycle, psychological, etc. around that. Right? I just feel like I don't necessarily see that with animals. I don't see animal. Like I said, I don't see an animal shaming itself. They're living. They're just being they're just literally living each day. Like my dog. Every morning is like breakfast. Yay! Mom's here. Dad's here. Yay. Like, it's just. It's not like, oh, shit. Tomorrow. What are we, like? What's happening? Maybe it's a little scared when sometimes, you know, leave the house and it gives me puppy dog eyes and stuff. But, like, it's not like humans are too smart for their own good. I always say this. You need to learn how to process, be with your emotions, redefine failure, redefine how you attach yourself to an external thing you want to chase. Otherwise, you're going to be staying in the fence.
[00:19:41] You're creating arbitrary rules. And you're in this world. You're in this fence. You're going to stay there and look for some of you. That might be great and that's awesome. But I feel like if you're listening to this podcast, is it is it that great? Do you love where you're at right now? Do you want to learn how to process your emotions so you can create balance? Is there a big dream that you want to chase, whether it just be a work life balance or a new business? Is that something you want because it is fucking attainable? Right now I've done it for myself and I've shown my clients how to do it. It is all about your thoughts, how you think, and how you process emotions. So I encourage you, if you've been a long time listener, if this is resonating with you, book a discovery. Call with me. Let's have a chat around how I can help you. Because I sit here sometimes and I'm like, The world needs to know this secret. It's actually in your brain. It's challenging to do, and I can help you through it, but it's in your brain. It's like it's like we are. Sometimes I feel like we are in the Matrix. It's crazy. Anyway, I hope this episode has helped you to redefine failure a little bit and go out there, create new fucking rules for yourself, extend that fence and go out and do the thing you want to do by.