How to Fail Successfully – A 3 Part Series

Every year, as people are thinking about September and the work/academic year to come, I get emails asking me to repost this series on success and failure. I’m always happy to do it as the topic is a particular favorite of mine and one of my goals when working with clients is to enable them to achieve success and to deal with the inevitable failures and disappointments that are part of life. Things happen. They just do. The question is how you deal with them and what those things do to you.

do While I do try and find the good in every situation, I’m not of the “think only positive thoughts and only wonderful things will happen” school of thought.  Positive thinking has its place, but putting that kind of burden on yourself is often counterintuitive. Negative things happen, things you wish didn’t happen, happen. Now what?

Children of all ages have found this series helpful and it’s my great pleasure to post it again. Enjoy.

Helping Children Fail Successfully – A 3 Part Series

Fear of failure? Let’s change that term to Fear of Learning Nothing From Failure.

No one wins all the time. No one. The greatest athletes mess up, fumble, strike out, fall, choke (fill in the term you use) all the time. It happens. Actors flub lines and get stage fright. Business leaders and owners make wrong decisions with serious consequences. Politicians lose elections. Scientist’s experiments don’t go the way they thought they would. Writers get writer’s block or write something that they hate. Chefs burn the main dish.

The question is what happens after a failure? What do you do next?Did anyone get anywhere without some kind of failure along the way? Not a chance. The people who have achieved the most have also failed.

I’ve worked with so many children and parents throughout the years and this one area seems to trouble both groups the most. Failing at something. Whether it’s not getting the lead, or any part, in the school play, not making the team, failing on a test or not doing well, making a public mistake at the recital, failing emotionally, failing socially, failing interpersonally…the list goes on and on. What to do? Parents are agitated and upset, the children are despondent and often anxious about their parent’s reaction to the failure/upset.

The pressure to achieve everything, at all costs, publicly and every single time has been seeping into our collective national personality for a while. It’s causing unreasonable expectations for parents and children.

I’ve decided to spend the next few posts talking about ways in which parents and adults who work with children can manage their expectations for themselves and their children, learn how to accept failure and disappointment in themselves and their children, and learn how to use failure as a positive learning opportunity.

When working with clients to achieve the above an amazing thing happens. They and their children try more new things! The fears are manageable, a failure doesn’t become a catastrophic event and can be seen in context. Parents and children learn about managing frustration and disappointment. They also learn about expanding their options, being realistic about abilities and new ways to try achieving the same aims.

In short they learn my clients learn that “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again – oh – and try, try differently – oh – and try, try something new – oh – and try, try to measure yourself against only you”.

I look forward to writing more about it – it’s a topic I work with people on, lecture and teach but maybe I can learn some new things by approaching it in this new way.

Enjoy the day your way,
Rebecca (Kiki)
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For information on coaching, workshops, seminars, classes or materials for your group, school or institution please call 646.355.8759 or email me at atypicalcoaching at gmail dot com