Not achieving what you set out to is never a pleasant experience, and it probably shouldn’t be. We do what we can to plan, strategise, and execute so that we don’t fail, but unfortunately, this does not always guarantee our success.

Regardless of the failure or setback, its magnitude, and the reason why, it should never be enough to hold you back or stop you from the pursuits that you have decided are important to you.

In my experience, those who value, understand and have defined failure are the ones who, if or when they fail, are able to efficiently and effectively put it in perspective, learn from it and get moving again. They don’t just chalk it up to experience; they don’t just gloss over it; they take the time to understand what has happened and why.

They work hard to understand and gain perspective, one so they learn from it and two, they can then minimise the chances of it happening again from what they have learned.

Here are five points I continue to see them use:

1. Responsibility
First and foremost, they own the problem. The failure is on them! It’s not someone else’s fault; the world is not conspiring against them, and people are not out to get them. They take it upon themselves to recognise the failure and why what happened, happened.

They seek to clarify and understand their role in the failure, and then they take ownership of what happened and why it will not happen again.

2. Clean up
Nothing gets left behind. When you follow their path, there is no debris, no trail of destruction behind them. When setbacks occur, they take the time and make the effort to understand what has happened and why, but more importantly, what to do so it won’t happen again. Once they have all of this information, they move on.

As they restart their journey, they make sure to pick up all the pieces and leave nothing behind. They don’t necessarily know when or why they will need the pieces they have picked up, but they do know that they shouldn’t leave anything behind for someone else to deal with or clean up.

3. Time and space
Failure for all sorts of reasons can be devastating. The key to dealing with it is to give yourself some time and space to come to terms with what has happened and what needs to be done to get you up and going again.

Don’t be frightened to remove yourself from the situation, the environment, or the failure so as to allow yourself the time and space needed to gain perspective and understanding. In the process, create the plan that will get you back in the game and moving onward and upward.

4. History
Yours and theirs!

By yours, I mean look back at when you have had previously failed and use how you overcame that failure to help you once again overcome this one. New failure, same attitude!

On the subject of theirs, know that everyone you or I deem to be successful had failures and plenty of them. But also understand that each of these people we consider to be successful will tell you that their failures and how they dealt with them will be what has made them successful.

5. Don’t follow on
Way too often, I see people follow up a setback with a bad decision, enhancing the negative situation tenfold in the process. Don’t be one to add to that statistic.

If something goes wrong, make sure your next move, idea, decision, and/or action makes it better and not worse. If you’re not sure what direction to take, simply return to an applicable experience or process that has worked previously.

And in the process, make sure…

The Journey Continues!