The elapse of time can reframe your failure

Failure isn’t death. It’s not the end of anything.

Whatever happens to us doesn’t have to be the final word in our story. Our failures do not in any way limit who we are today, or what is possible for us tomorrow.

Quite the opposite, in fact. My yoga teacher has a lovely mantra for this.

Anytime your body can’t do something, that’s just information. You’re not failing, you’re becoming.

Isn’t that a wonderful way to frame disappointment? It’s a way of telling ourselves a nourishing story when we miss the mark.

Entrepreneurs excel at this habit. They often say that failure isn’t the end, it’s actually the beginning. In the grand scheme of things, it’a necessary step in the right direction.

It’s just information. Something didn’t work out? Fine. Where does that point? How could this move us along a path towards something wonderful?

The more answers we can come up with, the less likely the event will feel like a failure.

I’m reminded of the documentary about a tech startup built by the brightest minds of the eighties, and how the brand became a complete failure when launched.

This company shipped the first handheld personal communicator, over ten years before anyone even knew what a smartphone was. Which meant consumers didn’t know why they needed it, or what to do if they had it.

The market ultimately wasn’t ready for the technology, and almost nobody bought it.

But here’s the punchline. While the device and the company ultimately failed, the team behind went on to change the lives of billions. Every single person in the film went on to make something extraordinary.

And so, it wasn’t really a failure. Not when you take the long view. Like a musician who plays the wrong note in the chorus once, but then erases that failure by playing the wrong note in every chorus thereafter, the elapse of time can actually change the past.

Proving, that our future is wide open, as long as we use failure to keep moving the story forward.

Getting rejected isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. It’s just information. An opportunity to learn what to do next time.

Would you take more risks if you knew that failure wasn’t final?