Make Failure Work For You – Make it Your Fuel

I recently started a new chapter in my life – residency or rather housemanship as we call it and it seems like failure is all I come in contact with. After more than a year of waiting, my dream came true but learning everything from scratch and adapting to a new state has been both difficult but enlightening at the same time.

For many of us, failure is a daily fact of life. Quoting the adage “Failure is a great teacher “, it’s when we pick ourselves up and learn from it that we build up a valuable experience.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

I recently watched a commencement address by Abby Wambach and found a whole new way to look at failure.

1.Make Failure Your Fuel

“Here’s something the best athletes understand but seems like a hard concept for non-athletes to grasp. Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.

Listen: Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to be POWERED by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on. You gotta learn to make failure your fuel.”

Failure eats you up and breaks you from the inside. We push it away and reject it – thinking it diminishes our value. But that’s not the case. Maybe it’s not about the mistakes we make or how low we’ve fallen rather it’s what we do with the lessons gained and how we get back up that truly matters. 

2. Lead From Wherever You Are

“Imagine this: You’ve scored more goals than any human being on the planet—female or male. You’ve co-captained and led Team USA in almost every category for the past decade. And you and your coach sit down and decide together that you won’t be a starter in your last World Cup for Team USA.

So… that sucked.

 You’ll feel benched sometimes, too. You’ll be passed over for the promotion, taken off the project—you might even find yourself holding a baby instead of a briefcase—watching your colleagues ‘get ahead.’”

Watching others progress on as you stay where you are is difficult but it doesn’t mean you’ll always stay stagnant. If you’re willing and determined to move forward, however slow, you will. 

3. We Have Each Other’s back 

“During every 90-minute soccer match there are a few magical moments when the ball actually hits the back of the net and a goal is scored. When this happens, it means that everything has come together perfectly—the perfect pass, the perfectly timed run, every player in the right place at exactly the right time: all of this culminating in a moment in which one player scores that goal. 

What happens next on the field is what transforms a bunch of individual women into a team. Teammates from all over the field rush toward the goal scorer. It appears that we’re celebrating her: but what we’re REALLY celebrating is every player, every coach, every practice, every sprint, every doubt, and every failure that this one single goal represents.

You will not always be the goal scorer. And when you are not—you better be rushing toward her.”

Teamwork makes the dream work. It’s true, whether in sports or business or even residency teamwork is essential. Tasks become less dreadful and the environment becomes a safe space to learn and grow – and every win belongs to every one of us.

4. Be Bold 

“When I was a teenager, I was lucky enough to play with one of my heroes, Michelle Akers.

We were playing a small sided scrimmage—5 against 5. We were eighteen-year-olds and she was—Michelle Akers—a chiseled, thirty-year-old powerhouse. For the first three quarters of the game, she was taking it easy on us, coaching us, teaching us about spacing, timing and the tactics of the game.

By the fourth quarter, she realised that because of all of this coaching, her team was losing by three goals. In that moment, a light switched on inside of  her.

She ran back to her own goalkeeper, stood one yard away from her, and screamed:

GIVE. ME. THE. EFFING. BALL

And the goalkeeper gave her the effing ball.

And she took that ball and she dribbled through our entire effing team and she scored.”

This is so important. We lose sight of our capabilities and strength -disheartened. But most times, we’ve got to be bold to demand for that opportunity – for what we deserve. 

Above all, remember that all of us can learn just about anything with the right amount of intent, desire and dedication. If you’re also at a new workplace, starting a new chapter or just going through a rough patch remember, the harder the climb, the better the view.

Tags

• courage
• failure
• positive mindset
• tenacity