9. 5 Ways You're Going to Overcome Failure

In this episode, we discuss the topic of failure and overcoming adversity. We explore the reasons why people are afraid to fail, such as fear of judgment, rejection, and financial repercussions. I want to emphasize the importance of reframing setbacks, looking for lessons, taking accountability, and leaving failure in the past. I also encourage you to begin practicing positivity and finish this episode with some shared affirmations and quotes to inspire you to overcome failure.

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Transcript

Xela (00:00)
Hello, beautiful, smart, talented, creative, funny, empowered woman. Welcome back to another episode of Glow Getter Guru. If you're coming back, thank you so much for coming back. I appreciate you. You don't even know how much I appreciate you. I appreciate you. And if you're here for the first time, hello and welcome. Nice to meet you. My name is Xela and I am your host. So today we are going to be talking about...

failure, overcoming failure and adversity. Okay? But first, before we dive into that, I hope that you had a beautiful Mother's Day weekend. To all of my listeners that are mothers, happy Mother's Day. I hope you were spoiled. You definitely deserve it. Hopefully you were spoiled and or you spoiled yourself because like I said, you deserve it. You work hard.

take care of those kids. You're the baddest mommy on the block. It's giving big MILF vibes, honestly. But anyways, if you're not a mother, I hope that you still had a good Mother's Day weekend and you got to talk to your mother or spend time with your mother. Okay? So let's dig into overcoming failure.

Failure. It's part of the human design, but we seem to be so afraid of it, right? I know I've been afraid of it for a long time and I have been overcoming my fear of failure, but of course I think some of it is still lingering there as far as I was gonna linger there, but you have to kind of also learn to suppress it. So I made notes so I can stay on track. So why are we afraid to fail?

There are a plethora of reasons for why we're afraid to fail. The fear of judgment is a big one. I think a huge one, especially that was for me and for a lot of people, is the fear of rejection. Because when you fail, you feel rejected in many ways. There are other people out there where their self -worth is tied to their achievements.

especially if we think about like celebrity culture, right? And influencer culture and kind of the value that people put in our face of these material things are making me so amazing and so cool and everything so aesthetic. And if you don't have those things, sometimes you feel like you're a failure. And then a lot of them, they suffer in silence.

when they're going through a failure or something considered embarrassing or something that's, you know, human because their self -worth is tied to those things that they have and that they show and things like that. And not just influencers or celebrities. I know some another podcast that I listened to, the woman was speaking about how she had tied her self -worth to the financial.

contribution that she makes to her family. So she was feeling, if I can't make this amount of money and take care of my family, then I'm not, like, I don't think I'm worth a damn. Which is not true. But that is a fear of failure. And yeah, I think financial repercussions is a huge reason why people are afraid of failure as an adult and say, like, you know, lots of us take different paths, what we can do at that time in our lives.

in order to get money to be able to take care of our family and things like that. And so we're saying, okay, we're surviving right now or I'm barely making it. I cannot take a risk. I cannot fail because then I'll be in a worse situation than I'm in right now. I know that's a big reason why people are afraid of failure. And then of course, society just, I think they kind of just ingrain in us that failure is a sign of inadequacy or incompetence. So,

I personally have experienced that, like at work in the past where I may be learning something new for the first time, but I had been such a high performer that when I get something new, I have tied myself forth to whether or not I can deliver on that thing, even though it's brand new and I have no experience with it. And I have been made to feel at some points in my career that I was inadequate for not knowing certain things.

And so at that point I had been afraid to fail anytime something was given to me work wise. And I used that as a huge driver in my career for a long time, especially since I do not have a college degree, but I work in corporate America. And most of the time I'm the only one on the team with no college education because I just purely went off of resourcefulness.

and selling myself and pretty much just being the best at what I do in order to get those jobs. So when I fail, I do feel incompetent. And for a long time, it was a little bit tied to not having a college education. But as I had matured in my career, I realized that the college education really doesn't matter. Like, if you got the skills, you got the skills. Some people have a bunch of college education and they just still did. They just can't do it. So.

With that being said, I have learned a lot about failure. And we're here to talk about overcoming failure. So I made some notes and what I want to communicate mainly is for you to think about what are you afraid of right now? Is there something that you're afraid of right now? And I want us to think about the idea of embracing failure and becoming comfortable with it, becoming more comfortable with failure.

which is kind of the opposite of what our body and our mind tells us to do. However, there are so many benefits to embracing failure. There are some risks. We all know that failure sucks. I'm not here to sugarcoat it. We know failure sucks. Rejection sucks. We know how low we can feel when we fail at something. So I'm not discrediting that at all. I'm just saying that the more you're willing to try to do things,

the more you are going to fail. And when you do and you are comfortable with failure and you reframe your mind to what you're getting out of that failure, then you will be less afraid to fail, which could get you to that place that you want to be at.

I want to say more quickly. I don't know if that's proper English, but it could get to you, get you to embracing failure means that you are getting up and you're trying again more often because you're not afraid to fail. And when you do that, you progress in that you're able to get to where you want to be quick, quicker than you would if you were afraid to fail and never try. Because if you're never trying, then you're guaranteed to not get to that point because you're afraid to fail. You can't do things just because you think you're going to succeed at it.

Okay. So being afraid to fail can prevent failure sometimes. I will give you that, but it will always prevent success because if you don't try, you can't grow. And if you don't grow, you can't get there. Okay. If you don't fail, you cannot grow. You will not sprout. You will not bloom. Okay. So,

Something important to know as you reflect. I want you to think about the times that you failed, right? You have to think of the lessons that you learned when you failed because I will tell you this, most, I would, I'm willing to bet my life that 95 % of the lessons that we learn in life comes from failure and maybe 5 % comes from success.

Okay, I'm willing to bet. I'm willing to bet. Because most of us can't relate to something or a lesson or I don't even, I'm struggling to communicate this. We don't know what we don't know until we fail sometimes. And then we learn something. So say you never used a screwdriver before.

You know, they got the rule lefty, loosey, righty, tighty. If you don't know that rule and you put a screwdriver in something and you turn it to the right and you notice it's not getting loose and it's getting tighter or the screw might start stripping, that is a failure. And your brain will say, it's not loosening. It's tightening. Maybe I should turn it the other way. That is the lesson that you learn in that failure. And then you turn it the other way.

and the screw gets loose and you take whatever that thing is apart. I don't know. I don't want to sound sexist. Maybe that was a better metaphor for a man. But ever since I bought a house, I bought a tool bag. So I definitely know how to use a screwdriver now. So I encourage you to try to try to use a screwdriver. I'm so proud of myself. Make it mommy. That's what I call myself when I have to think something now is make it mommy. Yeah.

And it's so funny because like the trim on the wall used to come out and there were nails. And so I would take my hammer and I would hit the trim back on the wall and I'd be like, nailed it. Like this is a job for make it mommy. Anyways, I think that was a good analogy about failure. You turn it to the right, your brain finds you don't know what you don't know. You didn't know which way was the right way to turn it. You just tried turning it.

and you failed and then you said, maybe I should try this. It's kind of like experimenting, you know? So we look at it as a failure because we didn't get it right the first time. But really you got better. And in that case situation, you got better instantly because your brain worked out what was supposed to happen and you were successful on the second attempt of turning the screwdriver. Now, if you stripped it so much that you can't turn it, that's a different story. Okay. Anyways.

let's see.

Sometimes we have failures that we don't even notice like When we are in our comfort zone and I'll be the first to say I don't think there's anything wrong with staying in your comfort zone some people they want you know a very specific type of lifestyle or a Simpler type of lifestyle and there is nothing wrong with that because we're all individuals and we have the right to want to live our life however way we want but if you are someone who Reached a certain level of life

and you are comfortable and you have no reason to grow or anything like that but you just feel like you want something more, you want to do something more or there's something else that you should be doing whether it's like on the hobby side of things or if it's growing in your career or whatever it is, whatever it is. Not people that are like happy like I want to live my life like this the rest of my life.

but people that are in the comfort zone, but they just know that there's something more for them. The biggest, most realest failures that are being made is right there in your comfort zone because you're not trying. You're not succeeding if you're in your comfort zone, not doing anything about the feeling that you're giving. That is an automatic failure.

I want to make that very clear. That is a failure. If you're in your comfort zone and you want something more, you're failing. So there's no, I feel like it doesn't feel like a failure, right? Because there's nothing wrong with your life. But is that holding you back from Trump, but the fear of failure that you have is holding you back from fulfilling whatever that desire is. And in turn, that's a failure. And we do beat ourselves up sometimes for that failure. Like,

when you have that aching and you're not doing anything about it, that is a form of failure that you're feeling that's not going to go away. And you know what? I bet if you tried whatever it is that you want to do and you failed, you might even feel better than not doing it at all. Like beating yourself up like this, I don't want to do this. You might fail and figure out, okay, maybe that isn't for me or I failed, but at least I had so much fun trying the first time, you know?

It's a risk either way. Like would you rather risk failing but getting closer to the life that you want or failing and just staying the same forever and then getting to the end of your life wishing that you had tried something. You know because at the end of your life and you're wishing you tried something you're not thinking about whether or not you failed at it you're just wishing that you did it.

So yes, staying in your comfort zone. If you got that feeling, that's a no -no, girl. That's a no -no. That's a big no -no. And then I also want to talk about a little bit about the safe path, because me and my sexy Latino lover were having a conversation were having a conversation about the risks of failures, because he is an entrepreneur, and I am a corporate girly, OK?

And so, but I want to become, I want to transition into entrepreneurship, but I just haven't found exactly what that looks like for me. So we were talking about the risks of entrepreneurship and he was like, well, you know, you took the safe path and I'm putting safe path up in my air quotes because to me it's not the safe path because I've been in my career for almost 12 years now and I have seen so many.

cuts when a corporate is like doing a when a company is doing a reorg and lots of people lose jobs of people sometimes hundreds of people have lost jobs and it can happen at any moment in any second and is that a safe path is it really a safe path maybe it could be a stable income for a while but i personally don't consider it a safe path because look at what happened with covid hundreds

Thousands of people lost their job on the safe path, you know, and they had to figure things out It became like this big boom of like side hustling and entrepreneurs and things like that because people had to figure things out they were forced into taking the risk because the safe path It didn't it wasn't the safe. It wasn't a safe path you know, and I guess in some ways like people do still consider it safe because

I can get fired from my job tomorrow and I can go look and I can find another job easily, but that is also not guaranteed. It could take me six months to find a new position, eight months, because the thing is I don't live my life and I don't think you should live your life with, I just need the next opportunity to help me to survive. So if I were to be let go of my job, I don't want to be the person to take the first opportunity available. I want to find a company that matches.

my needs. I need flexibility. I would like to work hybrid. I want to be in a company that understands that I'm a mother and my family comes first. I want to be in a place that values work -life balance. And when it's time for me to go, it's time for me to go. And please don't call me on the weekends. And I'm not working on the weekends unless there is an emergency. And it depends on what you consider to be an emergency, if it matches with what I consider to be an emergency. You know what I'm saying? So it's not...

the safe path because you're taking risks to be in a place where you're not going to be happy or to wait long periods of time to find a place where you will be happy because I have nothing against corporate nine to five because I honestly I could I could see myself as a corporate girly into retirement. I have no problem with it. I like the people I work with and I like the job that I do. I have you know some problems with

some of the things that are going on. But entrepreneurs deal with the same thing. And I do think that being an entrepreneur is a higher risk and it's a lot more work and it's a lot harder to have some of those work -life balances. So in that sense, I could see a safe path, but let's just not call it a safe path because there is a risk of failure on both things. But you have to be willing to...

embrace the failure for what you want, whether that's going through the corporate path and you're going to be happy there and you're going to grow your career there or if you're going to be an entrepreneur and you're going to risk failure there and you're going to take high risk to make more money, you can do that as an entrepreneur or as a corporate girlie. Okay and both of them are also a financial risk for not making money because you have no control over those things. So I had to add that in.

But I will say, I'd like to share that my biggest lesson that I learned from failure out of all my failed jobs, failed relationships, failed friendships, failed side hobbies, failed business ventures, failed anything, is that I want to be fulfilled. And failing is worth the risk of being fulfilled. And...

You should think about that. Think about that. Our happiness and fulfillment is greater than any risk of failure.

And that's true.

because you might go through a hard period. What do they say? There's some kind of saying, I don't know the saying, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about when I say like, shit gets real crazy before it gets good. And you may have even experienced that. Like the worst has to happen before the good comes. The rainbow only comes after the storm. And that's true, like for failure. Because if you're...

learning to do something and you fail, you learn something every time. If you're practicing self -awareness and you're trying to intentionally find the solutions when you're failing, you will get better and better and better. And I know the risks are sometimes time, money, but some of the most successful people that you admire have

failures, many, many, many, many failures. They did not get to where they were without many, many, many, many, many, many failures. That means embracing failures, hearing no's, and things like that. So let's get into how we're going to overcome failures.

because we didn't learn to crawl, we didn't learn to walk, and we didn't learn to run without falling or making mistakes or having our parents say, or laughing, you know? So naturally, we came into this world failing, right? And when we were babies, we didn't give up when we failed. Usually, a baby falls down when they're learning to walk. They get right back up. They fall again. They get right back up. We've seen it. We've seen it so many times.

They don't even think about it. They are so excited that they stood for those few seconds that they don't even care about falling. They love the idea of walking so much that they don't care if they fall 100 times or every step they take, they fall because they are so excited to walk. They could see it happening. So that's what we're going to take. That's the approach we're going to take.

Okay, here's how we're going to overcome failure. One, we're going to reframe our setbacks. So when we fail at something or something doesn't go our way, we're going to reframe it into something positive. That means when we hear no, we are either going to say, why was that a no? Was it something that I did? We're going to reflect on it. Is there something I need to do? Or we're just going to say, okay.

Well, I tried and I got a no and I've got so many nos for this. So I'm going to reframe the word no as an acronym for next opportunity. This one's not for me. One door closes, another one opens. Most of the time, the way I like to think about it is this no and this door closed for a reason because I'm going to get something better. Number two.

Look for the lessons. Like we talked about with the screwdriver example, we turned it right. It didn't loosen up. So maybe we should try turning it left. So we learned that we should not turn it right if we want to loosen the screw. We need to look at all of our failures like that and look for the lesson. Was it because I didn't practice enough? Was it because I have no experience right now? Like if you're trying something for the first time.

did I think I would be good at this right away? Is it because I have experience in this, this, and this? Or I don't have experience in this, this, and this? Or I need to practice this first in order to get here. Sometimes we're skipping steps and then trying something and then we wonder why we fail because we tried to take a shortcut, things like that. We look for the lessons. Number three, we will highlight the growth areas and focus on solutions. Number four,

Take accountability, which I kind of was talking about a few seconds ago. What did I do? What can I own here about what happened and things like that? So you take accountability for the role that you played in the failure that happened. So we're not being delusional. We're not blaming someone else.

You're looking at yourself and saying, what can I own here? What was my role in this failure? Did I try to skip steps? Where did I go wrong? Or did I do everything right? I just need to grow in this area. Take accountability. Don't say, I failed because of this person or I failed because of that or...

Sometimes when you're taking accountability, there are factors that were out of your control that did contribute to your failure. But when you're acknowledging that, acknowledge your role in it as well. Okay. This one is the most important thing for overcoming failure because if you do not do this step, then you will not have a good time embracing failure and it will hinder your growth to where you're trying to be.

And that is you need to, after you fail and you self -evaluate and you determine where you need to grow and you reflect on it, you need to leave the failure in the past.

Leave the failure in the past. Okay? We're not here to beat ourself up over the failure. We're not here to obsess and obsess and obsess over the failure. We're not here to say, I knew I couldn't do it and I'm the worst and blah, blah, blah, and all the horrible, terrible things that we tell ourselves when we're self criticizing. We are saying, I tried this. These are the lessons I learned. These are my growth areas. It's okay that I failed.

It's okay that I failed. People fail every day. Every single person on this planet fails. And I have gotten the knowledge I need from this experience that I just had with this failure. And now I'm going to take those lessons and all the negativity that came along with the feelings I had. I'm leaving them behind so that I can continue to do this and I can continue to grow and I can get to where I need to be.

That's the most important one. Leave the failure in the past. All right. And then a very close second is to practice positivity. So lean on your community, even if that's one person like this podcast. Come on, girl. Come on, girl. I will help you feel positive. and also practice positivity if you're using your community to lean on. Don't...

always go to your friends and dump negativity on them because that can feel really heavy. You want to, if you need to vent, that's fine, you know, and get it out. But I would encourage you to have the conversation with your community or your friend where you're looking for that type of support and...

when you're telling them about your experience, even if there are negative things, because we're not pretending negativity doesn't exist, we're just trying to be more positive. We are going to tell them, but please try to end the conversation with some positive things that you can do. Don't just dump on them and don't. So either say, I really want to turn this around and...

I have no idea what to do or I really want to turn this around and these are the things I was thinking that could help me do that. Or you could say, well, yeah, this experience was so very bad, but at least insert positive lesson learned here. OK, let's not trauma dump on our friends every single time we talk to them. All right, and then practice positive self -talk.

which I'm going to wrap this episode by just giving some quotes and positive affirmations. So here we go. Let's dive straight in and I'm going to share this quote with you. I'm proud that I tried and I will try again. I am not a prisoner of the past. It was just a lesson, not a life sentence.

And then some of the affirmations that I have. These affirmations I used to read every day, I need to get back into the habit, but I'm just going to read a few of them. And that is, I am a positive person. I have a solution -based mindset. I give 1 % or more to creating my dream life every day. I am consistent and disciplined. I am going to be successful no matter what. My dream life is already mine.

I am an amazingly talented, creative person. have no problem advocating for myself. And I will leave you with one final quote from the queen of all queens, Beyonce, and it directly correlates to what we're talking about today as far as embracing failure and overcoming adversity. The queen Beyonce said,

I'm not afraid of being afraid. I'm afraid of not being true to myself. And with that, I will leave you with those things to ponder on. And thank you for talking with me today. And I'm so excited to speak with you and I'll talk to you next week. Bye, girl.