Learning to Reframe Failure

For much of my life, I worked overtime to avoid failure.  Failure seemed like the worst and most embarrassing  option in every situation.  So I planned and studied my best to avoid failure.  And when it would come, I would feel almost a sense of panic inside me.  It was such a silly way to live, but it was what I knew.  Maybe this sounds familiar to you too?  If so, I want to share how I am learning to retrain my brain and reframe failure.

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Failure and Feelings

I have had enough friends who have experienced similar thoughts and feelings to know there will be a good percentage of you that will connect with this story.  Earlier in life, I would beat myself up for having such “crazy” feelings and tell myself to try harder to just be cool about things.  What a terrible game plan!

To start changing the way I handled failure, I first needed to understand where these failure feelings were coming from.  I was a good kid growing up.  Generally, I followed the rules and I did pretty well at school.  I think that was an easy recipe for a success addict.  It felt good to get recognition for my good grades or my special accomplishments.  But somewhere along the line I started to believe that those things were the only parts of me that were good enough to display.  To make a mistake would take away from my success and it should be avoided.

To be honest, I really didn’t identify my physical emotions around success until I was well into adulthood.  It had always just been the way failure felt.  I never really gave it much thought.  But when I started to see a counselor during a really difficult period of time, she encouraged me to pay attention to my physical body when I felt big emotions come.  

Through this process I realized that my body went into a fight or flight response each time I made a mistake.  Especially if I thought my mistake was on display for other people.  It wasn’t like I made a conscious choice for my body to respond this way, it was an automatic reflux after years of using the same neural pathway.  

But recognizing and practicing calm breathing during these times was my first step to finding a healthier way to handle failure.  Taking slow breaths, drinking water, and having healthy truths to tell myself, helped me learn to calm my physical response.  Once my physical response was settled, then I could begin to think about reframing my experience.  

Learning to Reframe

Only after I have calmed my body’s physical reaction to stress can I begin to address my actual thoughts.  This has definitely been a work in progress for me.  It hasn’t happened overnight and it has been the result of God working in my heart to know his love for me.  But I have begun to be able to reframe how I view failure.  For example, on my first day of my latest long term sub job, I messed up several things.  I forgot to erase responses from a daily Google form my students fill out.  I also gave out the wrong homework assignment.  After school that day, I could feel my mind starting to beat myself up about those silly mistakes.

Instead of just letting my mind have free reign though, I made an intentional choice to reframe my failure.  I could see my mistakes as proof of how incompetent or unintelligent I am, or I could see them as experiences that taught me something new and valuable.  I learned that I need to erase student responses each day on our morning form.  In addition, I learned what the daily homework sheet should be each day.  I learned several things that would help me be a better teacher the next day.  As I look back on the last month, I haven’t made those mistakes again!  And isn’t that all we can ask of ourselves in new experiences?

The Next Step

The final step that I have found helpful when reframing my failure is to share it with others!!  After my first day of school, I had the opportunity to share my high and low of the day with my family at dinner.  I told them how I had made these mistakes and it had given us a bit of a rocky morning.  BUT that I was confident I had learned several things that would help me in the next few months.  Sharing this with my family helped me be more confident in my reframed thoughts, and hopefully sent the message to my kids that it is okay to make mistakes! 

I also had the opportunity to share these same thoughts with some of my students.  When they struggle with a new topic or assignment and want to give up, I have my own experiences to remind them that each failure can be an opportunity to learn instead of an open door for shame.  I hope that they can begin to reframe failure now so they can lived unhindered by shame.  

Have you been able to have success at reframing failure?  I would love to hear from you!  Tell me what has helped you move from shame to a place of learning.  I am cheering for you!!  

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