5 Influential Ways to Turn Failure Into Success

There’s hardly a person in history that hasn’t seen failure in life. People fail in life and it hurts. It can cut them deep, leaving you with no one but your sorrows to wipe your wounds off. Usually, when we fail at something we can’t seem to see through the pain to find out why it happened.

However, failure is evolutionary – it helps us to grow, mature, and reach a deeper understanding of life as to what we want and why we want it. It is basically the real secret towards success.

Quite frankly, if you were to succeed in every endeavor, you’d become arrogant and a narcissist. Failure helps you to become a better person, expanding your mind while deepening our hearts. As much as it can hurt at times, without failure, it would be difficult to appreciate our successes.

If you have faced failure recently, it is okay. You need to believe in yourself and in the fact that failure isn’t the end of it all, it might be the right beginning. Of course, there are several ways to turn each failure into a success.

Here are 5 ways to turn your failure into success:

1. List the reasons you failed

Everyone has dreams and ambitions they want to see fulfilled when they’re striving for success. So when you fail, you need to see those reasons again. Have a look at them and think, “Do I still want this dream to be a reality”’, and if the answer is yes, do not give up. If you don’t have a strong enough reason why you need to succeed, failure will be likened to an atomic bomb, leveling your hopes and your dreams in its wake. However, when you have a strong reason, nothing will stand in your way.

2. Acknowledge your mistakes

A responsible individual will always own up to their mistakes, as it is important to acknowledge where you faltered. If you don’t own them, you can’t possibly redeem them in order to achieve success.

There’s no reason to hide the fact that you failed. Puffing your chest out and blaming others or your circumstances is a sad little charade that doesn’t last long. You don’t really have to apologize for the choices you’ve made, but you do need to recognize them as they are to avoid such choices in the future.We are product of the past but we don’t have to let our mistakes define us.

“Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” – Dale Turner

3. Learn from your mistakes

When a person fails and tries to get over it, he may tend to ignore all the things he did that led to the failure. After reviewing your failure, acknowledge your mistakes and only then can you learn from them. As they say, “The only way to fail at failing is to learn nothing from the experience.”

This is good practice, as long as you don’t blame yourself pointlessly. Don’t dismiss your failed experiments but learn from them. Write down and remember everything you know you could have done better because it will motivate you to improve the next time.

4. Consistency is key

Consistent action creates consistent results. You can try as hard as you want but strength doesn’t come from what you can do; rather doing the things you once thought you never could.

Whenever you let yourself fall down, you have to learn to dust yourself off, get up, and move forward. Repeat this process until you’re at the point where you wanted to see yourself. Consistency is highly undervalued yet what you do every day matters more than what you do every once in awhile. Always remember to “Try, try until you succeed.”

“Consistency for me is everything.” – Alexei Navalny

5. Don’t lose your confidence

Failure can shake anybody’s confidence. That’s completely human. But remember, confidence is your biggest asset in your daily routine which can lead you to improved mental well-being as well. Remind yourself that you have the strength to rely on and weaknesses to improve. Everybody falls down from time to time as long as they’re human. That doesn’t mean you can’t pick yourself up and run a marathon. Regaining your confidence after facing a devastating failure can be the strongest thing a person can do. If you can do that, you can do anything.

Sometimes failure keeps you stuck in your old ways and you need support to help get past your bad habits. For that matter, you need tofind someone you can rely on for support. It could be a friend or a mentor or anyone who has experienced what you’re going through presently so they can point you in the right direction. Failure is the only way you can grow and evolve, because ultimately, failure is an opportunity to do better.

Do you often procrastinate? Are you doing it now by reading this article? If yes – awesome, continue reading.

Most of us consider procrastination the biggest troublemaker and productivity killer. You see it as a vice, consequently, you try to overcome its effects, kill the procrastination beast and cheat with all the possible means.

But what if it’s not quite so? What if procrastination can virtually lead to productivity? Have you ever thought about this aspect? Many outstanding productive people, in fact, were chronic procrastinators. How did they manage to achieve success? What tips did successful people use to beat procrastination?

Here are five unusual tips from hard-core procrastinators that will help you boost your productivity level:

1. Victor Hugo: Lock away your clothes

The author of Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and many more tremendously famous novels was beating procrastination with the most extraordinary and radical means. One episode from his life is the most illustrative here.

Hugo started writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame quite close to the deadline – in the fall of 1830. While the deadline was in February 1831. His preparation was thorough, but he did not feel like writing. Thus, he did something that didn’t leave a choice – he got naked and locked away his clothes.

The aim of all that was to avoid temptations of going outside. Hugo had nothing to wear but a shawl. And for many months, this rag (as his wife claimed) was his daily uniform. Did it work? Absolutely. He finished the book weeks before the actual deadline.

2. Gerhard Richter: Create a crisis

Gerhard Richter, world known German artist and procrastinator, got millions with his paintings. For example, Abstrakis Bild was sold for $20,802,500 at Sotheby’s. How did he manage to procrastinate and, at the same time, complete paintings of photos, abstracts, “blur” photo paintings, and many more works of art?

It’s striking that he actually wastes time on garden and not on his paintings. In one of the interviews, Richter described his daily routines: “I could spend my life arranging things. Weeks go by, and I don’t paint until finally I can’t stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don’t want to talk about it, because I don’t want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself.

It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.” Thus, his secret strategy to become more productive is a simple crisis.

“Chance determines our lives in important ways.” – Gerhard Richter

3. Bill Clinton: Take criticism seriously, not personally

The 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was described as a “chronic procrastinator” by Time magazine. Could you believe that a two-time Grammy winner may be addicted to postponing? Clinton had weeks or sometimes months to make comments on the drafts of his speeches, but, eventfully, it all ended with cut-and-paste in the end.

Even his Vice President Al Gore called Clinton “punctually challenged”. However, despite all the criticism, he managed to never give up. The key secret to productivity is the way you perceive criticism, according to Bill Clinton. If you take it too personally, you won’t be able to resist the feeling of deficiency that finally leads to the inferiority complex. Therefore, keep your cool when you are criticized. Then, you have more chances to stay productive.

4. Franz Kafka: Try to wake up the night productivity

The Czech writer worked as an insurance clerk and it was the time to existential thinking. The novelist though didn’t put his ideas into action. After Kafka had been promoted, he had more time and procrastination infected him for good.

His routine day after work, as he mentioned it on one of his letters, looked like this: “Lunch till 3:30 … sleep until 7:30 … ten minutes of exercises, naked at the open window … an hour’s walk … then dinner with my family.” There is nothing about writing though. When did he actually write? Beginning from approximately 11 p.m. and continuing up to 6 a.m. Not the perfect system, for sure, but that’s was the most productive time for Kafka. It appears that he spent most of the daytime napping.

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

5. Leonardo Da Vinci: Start several things at a time and make notes

An artist, mathematician, sculptor, writer, inventor, military engineer, Leonardo Da Vinci, is an outstanding figure in history. But despite the success he achieved, he was never focused on one thing at a time.

During his lifetime, he managed to complete only 20 paintings. The Virgin of the Rockstook him 13 years to put the final changes. While his most illustrious work The Mona Lisa – as many as 16 years. The reason for that was his multi-tasking capacity. He was an incredibly broad-minded and all-round personality with so many genius plans. Toimprove a willpower, he had a rule book where he had more than 7,000 pages of notes.

His procrastination wasn’t already a secret for his benefactors. And some of them threatened him with bankruptcy in order to have his work done at last.

What if procrastination can be a way to extreme productivity and perfectionism? And still, you have structured procrastination as an option and a solution.

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Friday 18 August 2017