How Can You Turn Failure Into Success?

As I sat there with my friend, watching the American Baseball World Series, he mentioned to me that there are only 203 American baseball players whose lifetime batting average is over .300. And there are many more Hall-of-Famers whose batting averages are below 300. A baseball player with a .300+ lifetime batting average is considered to be a success. Think a moment about the fact for every 1000 “at-bats”, those 203 batters were struck out, run out, or flied out almost 700 times. That’s a .700 failure rate. That’s when I wondered to myself, “How can you turn failure into success?”

I assess my life in terms of how successful I am in achieving my different goals. I’m sure you’re that way too. When you succeed at something, you feel proud of how resourceful and smart you were in achieving your goal. But when you don’t, the feeling of despair can “sink the ship”, and it is rooted in how we use our experiences. In this post, I’m going to show you that even failure can mean success – if you know what to do with it!

How do you react to success or failure?

Imagine if you were learning to do something like building your business, or improving your career, and every 10 times you tried something new, your failed 7 out of those ten, or two out of every three.

Deep down I want to believe that almost all failures are only temporary and can be used as fuel to get me to the next success. Inspirational speakers often talk about “turning failure into success” and most of the time, I agree with them. Yes, it would be better if I can somehow turn things around, so I end up successful in life. But the big question is: how do you do it? Turning failure into a winning situation sounds easy enough but it seems as if only a handful of people know how to accomplish this feat.

The secret is collecting and using feedback.

What does feedback have to do with succeeding?

I remember the first time I went into a baseball batting cage. My college friends and I went to an amusement park in Atlanta, and we decided to try hitting baseballs just for fun. None of us were baseball players. We were all soccer players.

Thirty miles an hour and 25 balls, and I think I hit one. Sixty miles an hour and I was just swinging and hoping. There was so much to consider: my stance; the speed of the ball; the speed of my swing; the trajectory of the ball.

Finally, when I did get a “hit”, meaning I connected my bat with the middle of the ball and I heard that “ping!”, I tried to repeat the swing, unsuccessfully.

I read an article recently and at the end, it had a quiz entitled “How well do you pay attention?” Needless to say, I didn’t do so well.

Feedback is defined as a “reaction to any type of event.” Feedback is essential to success because it reveals why and how something happened in the first place.

I seldom pay attention to feedback because I am so preoccupied with what was said or what was done as opposed to focusing on my reaction and the feedback after something was said or done.

Here’s a good example: salespeople who use “selling scripts” to encourage customers to buy something.

Have you ever encountered a salesperson who gives you their entire pitch while ignoring your input as to what you actually need from them?

I bet you have!

And you often have to wait for the salesperson to finish before you can get in a word so that they can start listening to what you have to say. As you can already imagine, such salespeople can miss numerous sales because they are too focused on giving customers their sales pitches.

A better trained salesperson will have a script that allows him or her to observe you as they make the pitch and allow them to adjust to the continuous feedback.

Statistics in sports in some ways serve as a feedback mechanism, allowing a player to observe their reaction, and change it for the next at-bat or game. So does watching game film.

But what we want is the ability to react quickly and in a positive manner.

How can you use feedback to analyze any success or setback?

Remember that 3-in-10 rule for baseball hits? Well, it’s a 1 goal per 10 shots ratio in soccer. That means the average soccer forward has to get 10 shooting opportunities in a game, on average, in order to score a goal!

Want to know what the average shots on goal per game are? 9.73. You have to be exceptional to score a goal every game.

So, instead of throwing in the towel or feeling angry with yourself when you are faced with any kind of setback, use a feedback method to learn from the experience so you can plan well for your next attempt.

Take stock, learn and adapt. Look at the failure analytically — indeed, curiously. Suspend feelings of anger, frustration, blame or regret.

• Why did I fail?
• What might have produced a better outcome?
• Was the failure completely beyond my control?

Here are some guide questions that will help you collect feedback from both successes and failures:

1. What do I really want to do?
2. What have I succeeded in doing up to this point?
3. What have I observed from my last attempt?
4. What are the things that I have learned from my last attempt?
5. Which of these lessons are essential to my success?
6. How will I know that I have succeeded in my goal?

You can add more questions to this list as you see fit. These are just the main points that you have to cover when collecting feedback from your experiences.

After gathering the facts, step back and ask yourself, what did I learn from this?  Think about how you will apply this newfound insight going forward.

It would also be helpful to affirm that failure isn’t a true end state, like success. “Failure” is simply a phase when the outcome isn’t what you expected. The logical thing to do when you experience a setback can be summed up as:

E – Evaluate your outcome.

A – Assess your feedback.

T – Try again.

 Here’s another secret.

The next time you feel like giving up, remember:  just E.A.T.! Well, not literally.

Evaluate your outcome

It’s very easy to focus on the negative events in your life while ignoring the positives. Maybe that big project you were working had a big bonus attached to completing it. And you forgot that one piece of work and missed the deadline by a month. Instead of a 100% bonus, you got a 50% bonus. So, what was the outcome? A better company process or your 100% bonus? Both right? But was this failure? Whenever you face a setback, try to consider the positive in your situation.

Assess your feedback

Feedback can come in many forms. Approaching a trusted source can provide a second opinion. This kind of feedback can help you identify what went wrong and propose solutions for the future.

Sometimes you may have procrastinated or didn’t have the skills. You can take steps to review how to not repeat the failure.

Other times you may fail because you didn’t anticipate future events.  With NLP a practitioner can advise you and help you uncover methods that can allow you to bypass future problems.

Try again

It is important to seek out other people who have had negative experiences similar to yours. You can see how they have embraced their negative experiences and turned them into positive ones—and use their methods to do the same.

Challenge, growth, and even failure is always required in order to move ahead and achieve a goal, but that’s really tough to remember when you’re feeling defeated. So, give yourself a little space from an initial setback, allow your emotions to cool, and let your rational side regain control. Then, you can look at your situation with new eyes and determine how to proceed.

As much as we try to avoid setbacks, sometimes these things happen. Even those who have had major successes aren’t exempt from obstacles. But it’s important to remember that what matters more than the failure itself is how you handle it—and move on.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur facing the shutdown of your company or you’re just coming to grips with a smaller personal setback, these strategies will help you deal with failure and bounce back even stronger than before.

Use these techniques to train yourself, and you will start to direct your thinking and use it in a deliberate manner to produce a successful outcome every time.