Bloom Your Mind

Ep 23: Fail Like You Mean It

• Marie McDonald

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Did you know that failure actually means you're taking action in the direction of your dreams? Instead of dwelling on past failures, learn how to use them as a tool to hone in on success. In this episode, I share the story of one of my brilliant clients who did just that. 

I also discuss what it means to fail ahead of time, with tips to embrace failure so you can make it a powerful tool in your own process of learning, growth and innovation.

What you'll learn in this episode:

  • How to embrace failure with intention instead of shame
  • How to accept embarrassment and use it to become better
  • How to make failure part of the process of innovation
  • Why failing means we are taking action in the direction of our dreams

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How to connect with Marie:

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We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to episode number 23 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we learn to fail like we mean it Y'all. Have you ever failed like hard? 

Think of a time pulled into your head right now. Can you think of it a time when you're going for something and you just kind of fell on your face? I remember getting up on a stage in front of 200-plus people and completely blanking on what I was going to say. To be honest, this actually happened to me once in high school when I was on a debate team. Ugh, I can still feel the way that felt in my stomach. And it happened for the second time in my life again this past January. Here's what happened I got up on this stage to accept an award and I looked out into these super bright lights that were shining in my face like the sun and my brain just blanked. 

And when I realized it blanked, I was like grabbing, grasping for what was supposed to be there and it was just gone. Y'all It was gone. I sort of floundered, I said some stuff in that way with stage amnesia, where I have no idea what I said. And then that whole acceptance me and the other folks that were accepting awards that night. That was turned into a podcast episode that thousands of people listened to. I walked off of that stage just like willing that I would not eat it because I was walking in heels, and I'm not used to it. I got to my chair without falling down. I sat down and I just felt flames licking my face like just heat. It was turning red like a cherry tomato, like shame, embarrassment, everything was like a burrito of embarrassment feelings. That was just like what I was at that moment so wildly embarrassed. I have done a lot of public speaking, and this has only happened once before when I was in high school. 

Like I said so, my brain just started spinning with all of the ways that I had just totally screwed up my reputation as a coach, a thought leader, and a speaker, and this happened in front of all of my peers. And then I took a deep breath, and I slowed my brain down and I told myself all right, girl, this is literally what you teach your clients all day, every day. So, you better be able to do it, you better be able to fail, handle it and learn from it, and you got to be able to feel your feelings. 

My stomach was like trying to jump out of my throat and I told myself all right, this go time be a product of what you teach. In my experience so far as a human, this is pretty much as bad as social embarrassment gets. 

All right let's do this. This is an embarrassment. This is failure. It's a vibration in my body. I'm going to be here for it and all of the things flashed through my mind then that I teach in my classes why we're afraid of failure. 

I thought about how our brains are so outdated, how we truly do come from the roots of being pack animals, how when our ancestors were rejected from the tribe or the group, that they were in the village, whatever it meant, that they were kicked out of the safety of the cave or the village. And you know what's out there When you're kicked out, away from the fire and the food and the spears and the safety of the group. There are saber tooth tigers out there And I saw my brain reacting to my fumbling stage presence. When I looked around that ballroom, I know that I was looking at the phases of my brilliant and wonderful and philanthropic peers, but my brain was seeing saber tooth tigers with big old fangs, as if right, they were so invested in what I had said that they were all thinking about how much I fumbled and how hard I failed as if they even really noticed. Like probably they noticed, but like we always think that people are looking at us and noticing us a lot more than they are. I know that I teach that, but my brain didn't know it. 

At that moment, I watched my brain try to make that failure mean I was going to die. I was going to, like, straight up, get eaten by those tigers. It was telling me my pack was going to reject me. I mean, I know our brains are outdated. 

I have literally led a company that teaches educators and kids and leaders failure tolerance, how to fail forward, how to mess up and celebrate it and learn from it and try again. I know this stuff inside and out, but at that moment, it was real, real hard. 

Now the truth is we have got to train our brains to fail. We've got to train them to want to fail and then to fail and to deal with it and to learn from it. In the innovation process, this is called iteration. You test, you evaluate, and you do that until you figure out what works. You do what doesn't work until you figure out what does. 

The process of elimination in our lives can feel a lot harder to do. So, my goal in this episode is to offer another view, another take on failure, so that we can all feel a little bit bigger, a little bit more, and have a lot more fun with it. 

First, you want to know the end of the speaking story. Everybody thought I did fine. They couldn't tell I blanked. We always, as I said, think people are paying so much more attention to us than they do, much more attention to us than they actually are. They didn't care and when I listened to the podcast that I was featured on, it sounded fine. Only I could tell It was really not that bad. But try telling my brain that, as I was teetering off the stage in those heels, we are going to fail. You are, I am. 

One way or another, we can either spend a lot of energy trying to avoid things that we could fail at and not pursue what we really want to do and be. By the way. This is one of the three most common things that people regret at the end of their life. But it is an option, and if we're choosing that option, we're probably also spending a lot of time and energy beating ourselves up when we inevitably fail. Or we can learn to fail like we mean it, to learn how failure works, how our outdated human brains deal with it, and what to do with it, so that every failure is, for real, something that we can celebrate. 

You ready, let's go.

So first, let me give you a snapshot of what our unattended brains think about failure. Our brains have it upside down. We think that we should avoid failure, that we should avoid it at all costs. It is literally the opposite, in my opinion. 

Brene Brown talks pretty famously about being in the arena. I love it when she talks about that. Failing means we're taking action in the direction of our dreams. To me, that's what it means. That's the type of failure I want to pursue. We're taking action in the direction of what we want, and that means we're in the arena. It means we're out there, putting ourselves at risk, putting ourselves in what our brain thinks is harm's way, by pursuing our dreams. 

So, I say our brains think we should avoid failure. But let's turn that upside down and let's try to fail. Let's make failure a goal. I'll tell you how to do that at the end of the episode The other part of this snapshot not only do our brains have it upside down, but our brains have it backward too, because we project our past into the future. 

We think that past failures indicate future failures. I will argue that that is only true if we keep doing things in the same way. We think that if we failed once or twice or three times, we should quit because we're not good at whatever it is. We weren't meant to do it. Our brains tell us all kinds of things like that. Our brains tell us that our past success is indicative of whether we will succeed in the future. I will offer that it is literally the opposite. 

We have to know what doesn't work to know what does. And as long as we are failing, like we mean it, which means putting all of our efforts into it, managing our minds and our emotions when we do fail, and then evaluating what worked and didn't work, then every failure gets us closer to success in whatever it is that we're trying to do. 

I had this brilliant client. He was not only brilliant, but he is hilarious. He made me cry-laugh every single time. We met one of the most amazingly intelligent and funny people ever and he was trying to sell a company and hadn't sold it a couple of times and was saying well, that means that it's less likely that he will in the future. And I talked to him and I don't know if I ever totally had him convinced on this, but we got pretty far and I said hey, that is true, if you think in the same way and feel the same way about selling your company as you have in the past because if you're thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same way, you will act in the same way and you'll have the same result. 

But if, instead, you evaluate what you're doing, you evaluate what worked and didn't work, including how you were thinking and feeling and how you were acting the last two times that you almost sold your company then you're only getting closer and closer and closer to success with each of those fails. Failure becomes the data that you use to home in on success. You're literally ruling out all the things that don't work and zeroing in on what does hone and getting more success data with every single full-effort attempt, and the longer you do that, the more likely you'll be able to succeed. 

But our brains think that if we fail, it means we'll fail in the future. So, what we do is we avoid failure. But you know what I think? I think avoiding failure is just failing ahead of time. We avoid failure by creating a prophecy that will ensure it Because it feels safer, but that's also whack-a-doodle. 

Our brains are bananas, y'all. I mean. Think about it Like when we're dating instead of dating and dating and dating and dating. Like 200 dates to rule out all the people that are not the right one so that we can find the right one, instead of dating and going on. Lots of flops and fails and dates that don't work until we find the one that does, we just don't date. We fail ahead of time. We hide in our houses instead of starting a business that doesn't work for the first few iterations, that has big failures as we go along, we just don't start one. We stay stuck. 

We stay keeping that business idea, that book idea, that project idea, and that community event idea in our heads. We fail ahead of time. Instead of asking people to go on a trip we want to go on, have an experience we want to have with them that they might say no to. We just don't ask them. We ensure the failure by failing before it even happens. 

So, I had this client that said that she tells herself it's not going to work when she's going to an event to make partnerships and to build community and create a buzz around her business. And she tells herself it's not going to work to keep herself from getting disappointed. And when she tells herself it's not going to work, she kind of does things halfway. She maybe doesn't introduce herself to people and she kind of spins a little bit in her head about saying the wrong thing. She sort of ensures her failure so that she doesn't have to fail. Do you see that? 

So, to avoid the 30 or 50% chance that she might fail when she puts herself out there, she puts herself out there halfway and creates a 100% chance of failure. Somehow our brains feel like that's safer. It's safer to never try than to fail until we get what we dream about. And that client, both these clients, all of us do that. 

Every single client that I have, that I've ever had, does this in some way. This is just the human brain. Can you relate to that? I know I can. If I feel like I'm not going to fail, I’m going to fail, like I'm going to be awkward at a social gathering of any type, which to me means I won't have deep connections with people or at least laugh really hard with the people I'm hanging out with, then I just won't go, therefore ensuring that I won't have deep connections or laugh really hard with people. I tell you we are wacky. 

All right, I am going to try to convince you to try to fail this week. And let me talk about why I think we should try to fail. We should try to fail because we have to fail if we're truly putting ourselves in the arena, if we are putting ourselves out there trying to put things into the world, turn ideas into real things in our own lives, in relationships, or in the big world. If we're doing something scary because it's what we believe in there's going to be some failures. So, let's go for it. Y'all. These are the lives that we're living right now. Right now, we have to know what doesn't work, to know what does. 

I always like to use an example of a kid walking here. If a kid fell down, well, they're trying to learn to walk. And they're like well, that means I'm not good at walking? Guess, I never will. That would be wealthy, right? Kids just fall and fall and fall until they learn to walk and somehow along the way we get more self-conscious, and we stop doing that. 

Channel your inner toddler y'all. And lastly, because not being rocked by failure, truly trusting yourself to handle failure, feels amazing. It feels like you're a superhero like you can just sidestep a bullet and reach out in slow motion and grab it out of the air, like, oh, I see that everybody else is avoiding failure at all costs and keeping themselves hidden, but I am learning to love it. I can do anything. That's how it feels Being an example of failing forward, like actually falling down and wiping yourself off and trying again with a smile instead of hiding. That is so good for you and for everyone around you to see. Be that type of leader, the type of leader that's not afraid to fail. 

One last thing I want to say before I give you a couple of things to do this week, ways that you can try to fail. If the reasons we want to fail are because we're putting ourselves out there, going all in on ourselves, and learning what doesn't work until we find out what does. Then the point of failure is to improve, to get closer to what we want. It's a process of elimination to narrow in on what works. And that means two things to me. Number one it doesn't mean that we're not trying. So, when I say fail, I don't mean that you're kind of like halfway going in on something, and it doesn't mean doing the same thing over and over again or doing something that isn't risking anything or that you don't care about. 

When I say we should try to fail, what I mean are three things. Number one you're doing something meaningful to you and you're really going for it. You're like doing your best in that moment. Number two you're doing something that you could actually really fail at. Someone could tell you no or reject you, or you could fail and really have to pick yourself up and brush yourself off because you're doing something you care so much about. You're in the arena, risking a little bit. And number three you're doing something that's in line with your values, your mission in life, your goals, and who you want to become, and if you want some guidance on that, you can listen to the episode, and turn up your desire. 

All right, to close out here today, let's talk about how I suggest you fail. I'm going to give you two ways. Number one develop failure tolerance by setting yourself some fail goals. I like to aim for three fails per week. It means I'm putting myself out there, I’m putting myself in the arena where people can see me, where someone can turn me down, can tell me no, could reject me, or where I'll have to really pick myself up and dust myself off. So, for instance, I'm going to go for 200 dates. I'm going to have three nos this week so I can get closer and closer to what I want. 

Or set a health goal, set a goal for meditation, healthy eating, or exercise, and try to do that. Set it, put it into your calendar, or put an idea out there. I'm going to write four times a week or post on a blog or whatever it is that will get your idea out into the world. Or, if it's a business goal, maybe you're asking someone to partner with you, to become a client, to try your service, if you're running an event, having a one-on-one conversation, or something else. Whatever it is you focus on that could be your fail goal for this week. 

When you fail, you're going to do two things. First, you celebrate your fails. They are evidence that you're not hiding and that you're going for your dreams. Every no is evidence of this. Stephen King had a nail on his wall with all of his rejection letters from publishing houses stacked up on it. Just Google any great thinkers fails and you're going to find RBG, Brittany Pack, Einstein and so many great thinkers. 

And then, once you celebrate your failure, you're going to evaluate. You're going to ask yourself four questions: what worked, what do I know? And you're going to do those first because they're going to give you access to good feelings, creativity, innovation, empathy, and problem-solving. When you focus on what worked first, then question number three is what didn't work? And question number four is what would I do differently? That reflection will help you understand what you need to improve so that you get closer and closer to success. 

I just taught this to a client and I had her say gosh, this is totally different. Usually, I just fail and say the whole thing was a fail, it was terrible, and I didn't learn anything. But if I evaluate like this, I can see what I want to keep, and then I'll keep doing that, and I can see what I want to change and fix it. Then I will actually improve every time. That's right, baby. That's failing Like you mean it. So go out and get some big juicy fails this week. 

That's what I have for you today, my friends. I will see you next week. 

Thanks for hanging out with me. Friends, if you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.