You failed. Now what?

A lot of people are writing about the fear of failure, and all the possible causes of it. But what happens if it’s no longer just a fear, but a reality? What if we grabbed for the brass ring and it slipped out of our hand. Our grasp was not sure enough.

What do we do with these feelings that almost all of us have faced in our lives? Do we just roll over and play dead? We’re know we are supposed to get back up on the horse, but sometimes it’s hard.

If you are in this predicament, here are four strategies that might help.

Strategy 1: Accept that in order to do something really well, in order for you to get better and better, you need to continually put yourself in a position to fail and, when you do fail, to correct for the failure.

As Mario Andretti said, “If things seem totally under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

Realize that the bigger the change you want to make, the more difficulties you will face. There will be missteps, road blocks and dead ends. Prepare yourself for this, and do what you have to do. To do something really well, you are going to have to take risks. An old English proverb states that a smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.

Strategy 2: Know that every mistake merely means an unwanted result. Every mistake is but on opportunity for learning.

Stay aware of the positive aspects of what we call failure. The naval ships in World War Two had these amazingly big guns, which would fire shells at targets on the land. The gunner who aimed the gun had two controls. The first control moved the gun left and right. The second control raised and lowered the gun. When the gunner thought he was on target he would fire the gun. He observed what occurred and modified what he did based on the result. If the shell went to the left of the target, he moved the gun to the right. If the shell went to the right of the target, he moved the gun to the left. If the shell went over the target, he lowered the gun. If it fell short of the target, he raised the gun. The gunner didn’t get upset when he missed the target and call himself a failure. He corrected for the error. Each time he did this, he got closer to the target. He only had to hit it once.

Failures allow us to fine tune and correct. Sometimes it is the only way to hit the target. So thank your failure for the lesson it taught you, and use the “failure” to get closer to your target.

Strategy 3: Pat yourself on the back, because failure means you are taking risks. If you easily achieve everything you try without failing, you’re probably not pushing your limits; you’re probably standing right on top of the target.

We don’t want to be one of those people who stand right on top of the target. We want to be risk takers, moderate risk takers, so we achieve something of importance.

You won’t ever run into a road block unless you are moving.

Strategy 4: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.

The song Pick Yourself Up by Jerome Kerns and Dorothy Fields, from which this strategy is taken, is one of the most inspirational songs I know. Don’t lose your confidence if you slip, the song goes, be grateful for a pleasant trip.

As the American poet Maya Angelou said, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”

Use these four strategies when you are feeling in the dumps because something didn’t work out as you had planned, and remember what Abraham Maslow, the father of motivation, wrote about failure. “One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities.” When Maslow wrote of one’s possibilities, I like to thing he was writing about vision, these wonderful changes we all want to make in our lives.