Ep 43: Rewiring Failure - The Neuroscience of Failing Forward

What if failure wasn't the opposite of success — but the very mechanism behind it? In this solo episode of Rewired, host, Tiffany Grimes, dives into the neuroscience of failing forward and unpacking what's actually happening in your brain during a setback. You'll walk away with five concrete, brain-based coaching tools rooted in the latest research in resilience, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioral coaching. Whether you're in the middle of a setback right now or building the mental architecture to handle whatever comes next — this episode is for you.

Tiffany shares 5 Brain-Based Tools for Failing Forward:

1. The Failure Reframe — Turn the verdict into data with three journaling questions
2. Self-Compassion Pause — Acknowledge, connect, offer kindness (Neff's 3-step method)
3. The Micro-Win Ladder — Rebuild dopamine momentum with the smallest possible win
4. Narrative Rewriting — Three-chapter story: what happened / what it cost / what it gave
5. The Resilience Anchor Practice — 5-minute daily nervous system reset

Ready to bring the science of falling forward into your workplace or personal life?Partner with an ICF Certified Professional Coach at Empower to do real team and personal growth work — creating understanding of how to use failure to propel growth. Start the conversation at www.YesEmpower.com

Got a question for the podcast??? Email us at Info@YesEmpower.com

Key Research Tiffany Referenced:

• Educational Psychology Review (2025) — Biological benefits of failure on learning
• Frontiers in Neuroscience (2025) — Neurological and psychological predictors of resilience
• Frontiers in Psychology (2025) — Self-compassion, PsyCap, and stress management
• Society for Neuroscience (2025) — Open discussions of failure and resilience
• Cambridge University Press (2025 systematic review) — Daily resilience and recovery speed

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Listen anytime on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or yesempower.com/podcast

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for weekly tools, neuroscience-based inspiration, and stories of real change.

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Empowered people empower people. Live intentionally. Lead thoughtfully. Grow through awareness.

Stay connected with Rewired
Listen anytime on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or yesempower.com/podcast

Join the Empower community on LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube
for weekly tools, neuroscience-based inspiration, and stories of real change.

Discover upcoming workshops, LaunchPad learning, and coaching opportunities at yesempower.com

Empowered people empower people. Live intentionally. Lead thoughtfully. Grow through awareness.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Rewired. I'm your host, Tiffany Grimes, with Empower Coaching and Training. Hey, Rewired listeners. I'm starting episode 43, one about failing forward with a listener question. So this comes from Casey from Portland. Didn't say Portland, Maine, or Portland, Oregon, but wherever you are, Casey, somewhere in Portland, we're grateful that you sent in this letter. Casey writes, Hey, I've been listening to Rewired for about six months. Thank you, Casey. And it genuinely changed how I think about my mind. So here's where I'm at. I'm 34. I just left a stable corporate job to launch my own business. Three months in, I lost my first big client. My website launch flopped. And last week, a mentor I really respected told me I was not quote unquote ready for this. I'm not sleeping. I'm second-guessing everything. Part of me wonders if I should just go back to what was safe. But another part of me knows I quit that job for a reason. I keep hearing people say fail forward, but honestly, it just sounds like something people say when they're already succeeding. How do I actually use my brain to get through this and not just survive it, but learn from it? Because right now, failure feels like failure. Thank you, Casey. First, I just want to say I hear you. And also that what you're feeling right now, that's not weakness. There's such self-awareness in what you're writing. That's your brain doing exactly what it was designed to do. It's feeling vulnerable. It was designed for a world that no longer exists. So in that vulnerability, it's trying to kind of quote unquote save you as opposed to build resiliency and come back and look at it differently. So what you're experiencing in this feeling or in this, I'm going to say feeling of failure is totally normal. So today we're going to talk about what failure actually does to the brain, the neuroscience of it, and then I'm going to give you five concrete research-backed tools that you, Casey, and other listeners can use starting today. Not just to feel kind of better about failing, but to actually use failure as the neurological rocket fuel it is meant to be. Listen, your brain doesn't just survive setbacks under the right condition. It grows because of them. So let's talk about why and how and get into this. What failure does to your brain. Let's start with this idea of what's actually happening in Casey's brain right now. And of course, I'm going to keep referring to Casey, but this is all of us. This is just our human brains as we are living and breathing and trying to succeed and failing on our path to success. Because understanding this really does help change our relationship to what's happening. So I want to start with the threat response. You've heard me talk about this in many ways, but I want to kind of put it into context here in what we're talking about. So when we experience a significant failure in Casey's scenario, it's losing a client, it's harsh critique from a mentor, it's the launch that didn't land. The brain's threat detection system fires immediately. The amygdala, I feel like we need a bell every time we say that on the podcast. That's our brain's alarm system that tags the experience as dangerous or as a threat. It can be novel. It can be like, oh, this is something I've never experienced before. But when it's in framed as failure, it's going to register in the brain as threat or danger. So then your nervous system floods with cortisol. Your prefrontal cortex, that's the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking, for creativity, for planning, for perspective. That pretty much goes offline. This is why failure can feel so catastrophic in the moment. You're not being dramatic, you're being human. I experienced this just this week, twice, as a matter of fact. And I really had to be with my brain and lean on the neural training and mindfulness work I've done over the last several years to remind myself I'm not in danger right now. I am safe. I am safe. This is an experience I'm having, but physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, in all these realms, I am safe. So I had to get myself back into this place that automatically goes offline. So here's where this gets fascinating. So failure actually primes the brain for learning. Research published in the Educational Psychology Review explains that failure triggers neuroplasticity. That is the brain's ability to reorganize and form new neural connections. So new brain pathways, making the moments after a setback one of the most neurologically fertile windows for growth. Now there's work we have to do to get there because if we let that survival lizard brain of ours take over, the window closes. So we're going to talk about that. The framing of failure is processed in the prefrontal cortex and gives us the motivation to pursue long-term goals. When we frame failure as being on the right track, we tend to persist. When we frame failure as the final verdict, like this is it, this is the result, then we tend to quit. That reframe isn't just positive thinking, it's a biological lever. And the great news is that we have our fingers on that lever. So we get to, with enough practice and enough awareness, be able to switch it back to this being really seen as failing forward, right? I'm on the right track. And then there's dopamine. Let's talk about this a little bit because we often hear dopamine, I've talked about it on here, as the reward chemical. It's what happens when the ding goes off on our phone or we're swiping on TikTok or Instagram that temporary feeling of kind of reward or feel good, that's dopamine. However, dopamine is also known and can be more accurately described as the learning chemical. So when the brain encounters an outcome that doesn't match its prediction, aka, we would define that as failure, dopamine neurons release neurotransmitters that tag recently active neural connections, marking specific synapses for strengthening. So this is how the brain updates its internal models and forms new memories based on the error, based on the failure. In other words, if we kind of reframe this, your brain literally needs the mismatch of failure to learn. So failure isn't the enemy of growth, it's the engine of it. Again, if we step into that, if we have our fingers on that lever I mentioned earlier. And listen, what we're really talking about is resiliency, right? In the moment where we failed or the reality didn't meet our expectations, and resiliency is a trainable brain state. In 2025, there was a study that introduced a neurologically informed predictive model that can estimate an individual's resilience using brain data, suggesting that resiliency is not just a personality trait, but a measurable, trainable neurological capacity. Research continues to confirm that a therapeutic approach, like cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness, neural training, cognitive behavioral coaching, especially in combination, are proven to enhance psychological resiliency. So, Casey, what that means for you and everyone else listening who's in their own version of this moment, you are not broken. Failure is an opportunity, and we're not just saying that to feel good. It's really this opportunity that your brain is in the middle of its most important upgrade. So let's give it the right tools to do that work. Okay, let's dive into the five brain-based ways to fail forward. So we're not just saying it to feel good, Casey. We're saying it to give ourselves the tools. So when that window of failure opens and we are primed, our dopamine receptors are going and we are ready to learn, we've got the tools to actually step into that. So the first one is a failure reframe. And we kind of already talked about this a little bit. This is also called a cognitive reappraisal or turning the verdict into data, essentially. So the most evidence-supported tools in the arsenal is this right here. We used another podcast to talk about this cognitive reappraisal, but it's worth another chat, a fireside chat. So this sits at the center of cognitive behavioral therapy and coaching, which is thoughts, influence, emotions, and behavior. So changing the thought changes the outcome. A setback becomes feedback, a mistake becomes a data point. When you see difficulties as workable, you are more likely to problem solve instead of shutting down. Reframing first and foremost what we define as failure. Reframing can reduce anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, shame by stopping the spiral of harsh interpretations. And sometimes, and I would even say most times, this is a guess, obviously, by the tonal inflection I used, is that most times those feelings are automatic and they're in old mental models that we have around failure that probably weren't ours to begin with, that we inherited, right? So in cognitive behavioral therapy and again cognitive behavioral coaching, the goal is to replace those global, usually unconscious labels like, you know, I'm a loser, or you know, I'm this is impossible. I'm not going to be able to do this, with more accurate appraisals that don't treat setbacks as proof of self-worth. So disconnecting my identity and my belief about myself from the action of failure. So after a setback, write out these three questions. One, what did this teach me that success never would have? I love that question. I use it a lot. What did this teach me that success never would have? What would I tell a close friend if this had happened to them? You know, we're always so full of great advice for other people. So listen to yourself. Listen to that great advice. What would you tell yourself? And then the final question in this tool is what is one small thing I can adjust or try differently? This moves the process from the amygdala back to the prefrontal cortex from threat mode to learning mode. We have our fingers on the lever. And that can start now. You don't have to wait for your next failure, quote unquote. Start right now reframing failure, that cognitive reappraisal. Begin telling yourself. And when you're talking to other people about what happened, right away, start to talk about setbacks or feedback. You know, that's a great little phrase you can start to say to yourself, or mistakes become data points. These are phrases we can be practicing right now. Write those down, say them to yourself. Tool number two, this is self-compassion as a neurological reset. I was going to say retreat, but I'll say reset. In the work of self-compassion, what we're really doing is learning how to treat ourselves like we would treat somebody that we love. The work of self-compassion, I find, kind of surprises people because it sounds so soft, but the research is anything but soft. In fact, it's quite profound. It says otherwise self-compassion enables individuals to handle setbacks without that harsh self-criticism, fostering emotional balance and more effective self-regulation. There was a 2025 randomized controlled trial that found that self-compassion was a key mediating factor in well-being and adaptability, with self-compassion and adaptability together showing full mediation effects, meaning that they were the active ingredients driving real change. Treating ourselves with love. The real ingredient in driving change. That is profound. Self-compassion bolsters emotional regulation by promoting mindful awareness that prevents maladaptive coping like avoidance or self-medicating or all of the other tools that we sometimes lean on to try to regulate emotions. When we practice self-compassion, we're lowering that anxiety and depression and building resiliency and optimism. This is based in Kristen Neff's work. She's really the pioneer in the world of self-compassion. There's this three-step self-compassion pause that you can use in moments right after the failure hits. So that's what this tool is going to focus on. So the first one is acknowledge saying something like, This is hard. This hurts. Then we connect. I'm not alone in this. Everyone fails. This is part of being human, right? Is what that might sound like. So this is common humanity. We often isolate around failure or think we're the only one. And the truth is we all know the experience of failure. So we're reminding our brain of this. And then we offer ourselves kindness, which is what do I need right now? Right. Do I need to step away from the computer? Do I need to just go sit outside and breathe a little bit? Do I need to go get a hug from my wiener dog? Like, what do I need right now in the moment? This isn't about bypassing the pain. So that is what I hear people talk about, like they're naming that as avoidance. But the truth is it's about not adding self-attack on top of what is already happening. So layering it onto your experience, which is what keeps people stuck. So we have the experience, then we have the story that we're telling ourselves about the experience, and we have the emotion that's connected to the story, and then the behavior that's connected to the emotion, and they're all kind of going in the spiral downward motion. And so self-compassion can really pause that and begin to go the opposite direction. Okay, tool number three, the micro-win ladder. So we are rebuilding momentum at the neurological level. When we fail big, or even what just feels big, our brain's reward system takes a hit. Again, mine crashed twice this week. Casey's talking about their hits this week. Confidence, motivation, and initiative all drop. The way back isn't through one massive comeback. It's through strategically stacking small wins that re-engage that dopamine system that we talked about earlier. So we often will fail and then we kind of spiral down. And then if we can regain any momentum, we kind of think about like it has to look like this. It has to be big. I have to make this total big adjustment. And that is not at all what science tells us. Focusing on small successes builds resiliency by nurturing optimism and forward momentum, really kind of reorienting attention to progress. So we place our attention on these micro successes, these micro wins. That process alone really helps to build a sense of competence. I have what it takes. I can do this. So let's walk through this together. After a setback, and maybe you have one that you can work with right now, identify the smallest possible action related to your goal that you can complete today. For instance, for me, it's letting go of my white knuckle grip on this and going for a walk. Honestly, that is a game changer for me. There is a win, I can go do it. It's a reset for myself. It's getting off of this machine that I can just shoot off emails that aren't well thought out. It's walking away from that, right? So it doesn't have to be a big impressive step. I'm gonna redo, I'm going to reissue, I'm going to make a meeting with none of those things have to happen. It can be tiny, then do it. Like I'm gonna release my grip from this. I'm going to release control and I'm gonna go for a walk. Then notice that you did it. This is how you rewire the brain's association between your goal and progress rather than pain. For Casey, specifically for you, losing the client stings. I get that one. But sending one thoughtful email to a potential new contact, that's a micro win, right? I can make a post on LinkedIn about the conference I went to last week and the connections I made. That is a microwin. I can do that, I can see it, it's achievable. The brain doesn't need a big win to restart momentum, it needs a win. Okay, moving into tool four, I do want to recap what we've talked about so far. So we've talked about the failure reframe or otherwise known as the cognitive reappraisal. So we are telling ourselves a different story about failure. Tool number two is self-compassion as a neurological reset. So again, within that, we're practicing acknowledging, bringing mindfulness to it. We're connecting, I'm not alone. I'm gonna kind of sit in that common humanity of failure for a moment. And then we're offering ourselk kindness. Tool number three is the micro win ladder we just talked about. So finding a way to create a win. It doesn't have to be the win for the problem that we're dealing with, but a win begins to build that ladder and move the brain. We're gonna talk now about narrative rewriting. So you're thinking about your failure story. The story you tell becomes the brain you build. So let's talk about that. One of the most underused tools in the resiliency toolkit is this rewriting our narrative. So the brain is a story making machine. You've heard me say that before, especially after failure. Boy, do we have some stories to tell. It rewrites a narrative, and if left unchecked, that story becomes a self concept. I'm not ready, I wasn't built for this, I should go back to what's safe. Maybe I'm not. Even a good entrepreneur. Maybe I need to just go work for somebody else. Maybe I'm not relevant anymore. You know, whatever. I could list five of them again that came to me this week. So ready to just step right in. Research from the Society of Neuroscience found that open conversation about failure, including formal storytelling, increases transparency, resiliency, and mental well-being. The act of narrating failure in a structured, intentional way changes how the brain stores and processes the experience. And, you know, I want to note how LinkedIn and social media can impact that because what we're sharing are successes, right? So suddenly we feel like everybody around us is succeeding, but we all could have a whole conversation about failures that we've experienced in the last week or two weeks or three weeks, and we can list it in our personal life and we can list them in our professional life. So what we want to do is write the failure story, thinking about it in kind of three chapters, if you will. So the first one is what happened. So this is factual, no spin. We're not, you know, catastrophizing it, just literally what happened. I got this email. This is what it said. This is what I did. Chapter two of this story is what it cost me. So acknowledge the real loss, right? So maybe it cost me the trust of my mentor, or it cost me, for me, it's the comfort in feeling like everybody knows I mean well. It may have cost us, you know, literally money in terms of a contract or a space or whatever it is. And chapter three, what it gave me. And we kind of mentioned this earlier in one of the steps, but this is another really powerful way to do it. What did it give me? The lesson, the clarity, the strength you didn't know you had. When I do this, I love to think about a TED talk. I love to think about, you know, so many TED talks start with people talking about the struggle. And so I like to pretend this is when I'm driving by myself or when I'm walking up the hill from my house. I love to just pretend I'm on the said TED stage and I'm telling the story from like, I've done so much that I can give a TED talk about this, but it started with the lesson from this low point. So anyway, have fun with it. What lesson did it give you? This isn't toxic posity. I want to be really clear about that. Chapter two has to be real. Grief is neurologically necessary for integration, but chapter three activates meaning making, which research shows is one of the most powerful predictive of post-adversity growth. Like, what did this mean to me? Who am I? Because I've I'm on the other side of this thing. All right, last one of the tools is the resiliency anchor practice. So we're training the nervous system to return. Let's talk about what that means. In 2025, a systemic review found growing evidence that daily resiliency work, particularly how quickly we recover from stress, is directly linked to well-being in both youth and adults. I've shared that finding before. Research has shifted from viewing resiliency as a response to trauma to understanding it as a protective factor that helps maintain health levels despite adversity, something that can be cultivated daily. And I want to just pause and talk about that switch. So rather than thinking about mindful work or resiliency being, we deal with it after we've experienced the trauma. And so now I'm engaging in a practice to try to return me to the state that I was prior to the trauma. So rather than thinking about resiliency like that, what science is helping us understand is that we engage when we, I should say, engage in a mindfulness, neural training every day that helps us learn to be present, that this can really help us maintain the levels despite adversity. So we're not waiting for something to happen, we're practicing it so that we are maintaining the resiliency throughout whatever life has to throw our way. This tool is about building a physiological anchor. It's the daily practice that trains your nervous system to return to a regulated, forward-moving state more quickly after the stress hits. So, how do we do it? This is the neuroscience of mindfulness, and there are a bazillion links out there for you, including ours. You can come join us every Friday for the Mindfulness Broadcast. We have a YouTube channel where we record all of those things. So here's one daily five-minute practice, a three-step practice that you can begin to do. This, I'm going to talk about it in writing, but you can also just talk to yourself. I'm a big fan of that. Um, so you start with deep breathing. The one that I would suggest is box breathing. That's four counts in, hold for four, four for the exhale, hold for four, and you do that several times through. Then you write or talk to yourself about one thing I'm still doing right. One thing I'm nailing is this, right? And and fill in that blank and let it be a bulleted list, or you can focus on one thing. And then finally, in this mindfulness work, again, this is a five-minute practice, is focused on the forward action. So name one next step. Name the one next step, not the whole staircase, not the end result, but just the next step. It can literally be I have to log on to my staples account and order those binders, right? Like it again, it does not have to be big, profound work. What's the one next step that begins to move you forward? Over time, this trains the brain to associate setback and recovery rather than setback and spiral. Resiliency isn't magic. So much of the work that we talk about isn't magic. We named it last week in the podcast with Sarah as the secret sauce, right? Like it's and then we said it's not secret, it's shaped by interacting layers, by individual traits, by social environments, by broader factors, by breath, by keeping your fingers on the lever. And it can be intentionally strengthened. So, Casey, coming back to you, here's what I want you to hear before I go. Your mentor said you're quote unquote not ready. Your brain heard perhaps proof of permanent inadequacy. But what that moment actually was is data. You are in the most neurologically active growth primed season of your professional life, and you don't feel it because growth rarely feels like growth while it's happening, right? Growth sucks. It feels bad. Ask any monarch butterfly who was just recently a caterpillar. You didn't fail, Casey. You've launched. You're iterating. And every one of those experiences, the lost client, the quiet website launch, the hard words from your mentor, your brain is cataloging all of it, tagging it, strengthening new neural pathways. You are not behind. You are being built. That is failing forward, Casey. The rest of us are also right here doing it alongside you. So, folks, I hope that you join us. I'll do a little tiny summary in the show notes and also include some of the studies that I've talked about. So thank you for joining me. Thank you, Casey, for your letter. If you have a note that you would love to be seen by a professional life coach, do write in to info at yesimpower.com. We'll see you next week for episode 44. Wow, that's amazing. All right, take care, everyone. Rewired listeners, if this episode resonated with you, I'd be so honored to stay connected. Follow the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. Share an episode with someone in your life, and leave a five-star review. It helps people access these tools and this work and grow our community. At Empower Coaching and Training, we believe that when you understand your brain, you gain the power to change your patterns, your relationships, and your life. If you're ready to go deeper, you can always learn more about coaching and resources at yesempower.com.