Ep 48: How To Rise From Failure

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Dawn McGruer:

So welcome to Dawn of a New Era. This is a podcast that is all about the most crucial things in business today, which I truly believe are marketing, motivation, and mindset. And I think this is part of the tool set of being a successful entrepreneur. So in Episode 48, we’re going to address something that many people don’t want to talk about and even want to bury their head and it’s difficult to come out of it. And what is this? It is how to rise from failure. Now I will quite openly admit that I have had many failures in my life, in all aspects, from things I’ve done in my business and my personal life. But what can you bring from this? It’s very difficult I think sometimes when you think about failure, to deal with the emotions that surround it. Because if it’s just happened, it’s still quite raw and everybody is going to feel disheartened. There is not one person who spends time, puts dedication into a project, then it fails, who’s going to feel super about it.

The worry about being judged for failing

Everybody has failed. Anybody who won’t admit that is just plain lying. And as with everything, the more authentic you are, the more authentic you are in terms of the way that you deal and process your feelings. People, I think worry that they’re going to be judged because they’ve failed. Often I think when maybe a business hasn’t worked out, a project, a campaign, just admitting that just feels all encompassing in terms of self-worth. You kind of put yourself down. But actually, if you never tried anything, which is worse? Let’s be honest, right? If you sat there and you thought, right, I’m not going to do that because I might fail, or you go out, you give it your absolute best effort and it maybe doesn’t turn out as well as it should do, which is better? Of course, stepping up and doing whatever it is that you want to do.

So failing actually is pretty important and it’s pretty good because what do we get from failure? Learning. And you have to be honest with yourself. You have to admit where you messed up. There’ll be bits that you know hand on heart, that you did wrong. And that doesn’t matter because guess what? You’ve learned something. You won’t do it again. You might do it again, but not quite as epically bad as the first time. So let’s just have a little bit of a laugh about some of the things that have happened, because failure is a very big topic and one that nobody really wants to discuss, but let’s get it on the table. Let’s get really true about failure. I have done things in business. I’ve invested in things like exhibitions, plowed my efforts in, put loads and loads of money behind showing up at stands and things. And this is like early years, maybe 20 years ago. And it’s not actually delivered what I wanted. Now there’s two reasons for that. Maybe my expectations were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t right for what I was trying to achieve.

Being honest with yourself

I mean, it really doesn’t matter what the outcome was, but what I need to do is actually review what happened and be honest with myself. Was it my fault? Could I have done it differently? What went wrong? And the thing is, is with failure, if you show up and actually analyze what went wrong, I started to understand my business more. I understood me more. I understood what I was good at. I understood what I was terrible at, and I understood better about how to delegate and how to empower people who were marvelous at doing the things that I was just damn dreadful at. So don’t beat yourself up. This is a temporary setback, and this is what I love about failure. You failed and every minute that goes past, you put in time apart from that. It happened. It’s in the past. You need to focus on the feature.

So it’s hard I think when you’ve failed, and I’ll be honest, sometimes you just get knocked down and you think, how do I come back from this? How do I pick myself up? You’ve really lost your mojo because you’ve kind of put so much into it. But what I do is I chart out on a piece of paper, all the things that I wanted to happen from whatever I was doing. And then I chart out all the things that went wrong. And then in between, I start to try and take ownership of things that I could have controlled, but guess what? There’ll be things that you could not or could never foresee or control. So those are the things that we can’t beat ourselves up for, because if there’s things that happen outside your control, like a little thing called COVID and pandemic, people have lost their businesses, their livelihoods.

Coming back from a failure

It could be, you are listening to this at a point where your business is in collapse. You could be looking at this thinking your business has come out the other side, but we are all facing a very uncertain future. But something that we need to look at, and this is a really great project or activity to do, is just look back at anything over the past 5 or 10, 15, even 20, even longer, that really just sticks in your mind. So if you sit down and you think what was an epic failure? And to move past these, you might think you have, but quite often I meet entrepreneurs who are still stuck in the mindset from a failure that could have happened 15 years ago. And that is a blockage, is a challenge. It’s something that holds them up in moving forward because it changes the way they think about the future. It changes the whole way they show up. It changes their whole outlook on everything. And this is why you might be thinking, why do I want to go rake up all these failures Dawn? What are you talking about?

But seriously, you need to do it. You need to find the pain, hold onto it, feel it, and walk yourself back through it. Start taking ownership, start thinking about what you’ve learned, how far you’ve come, what’s changed since then? And just get it all clear in your mind, and then start thinking about nurturing and improving yourself. Because if something’s holding you back, I guarantee it’s not something that happened in the future. It’s something that happened to you before. And we’ve all had it.

Taking ownership

I’ve had things that, even the past year, I’ve had to just move past. Box and I just move on. Things that have dented me, that have changed my outlook, changed the whole way I feel. But what it has done, is it’s made me improve myself. Because all of those things happen and people tell me they happen for a reason. You know, the reason, unfortunately, you’re involved in that. So whatever happens, you will have some part to play. And that part could just be starting the business. That part could just be wanting to do the project, but you have to understand that there is an inspiration to come from this and you need to reach out. If there is something that you’re dealing with and you still feel like when you think about it, I mean, sometimes I still think about some things that have happened to me, pains and challenges in my life, and I still feel emotion from it. And I hold that emotion for a minute just to see what it feels like.

Because you can’t stop feeling. Feeling in businesses is life. Sometimes we wake up full of mojo. Sometimes we wake up and think why on earth are we doing this? And you know, I have done amazing things in my career, but I’ve had as I say, some major, major challenges and things that I still look past and I think, oh my goodness, you know, really? But from them I’ve taken inspiration and the great thing is, is you can move past them. It will never feel as bad as it did that day, that hour, that minute. And you should reach out for support because honestly people will be happy to give this in abundance. It’s something that I give in our group all of the time.

And the reason I started the Facebook group, Dawn McGruer, Marketing, Motivation and Mindset, was I wanted to kind of be there for entrepreneurs because not always did I have somebody there and I don’t know if it’s an era thing because I’m 42, I kind of had this like staunch work ethic. And I think that kind of comes through some of the cultures and ages of obviously parents, grandparents and things like that. But I thought that I had to be there five days a week, showing up, doing everything and, you hit burnout. So you have to adopt a very constructive approach and learn from this adverse situation. And it’s about being a little bit resilient. I sometimes think the amount of things I’ve been through, I’m like, give me anything. I can take this. I can show up.

But what I know has never been helpful for me is when I mull it over. I’m one of these people who kind of causes my own anxiety because I hold onto things and I assess it and mull it and assess it. And I’m almost looking to get a different outcome. But what I’ve realized is that if I stop the mulling over and get it onto paper, it almost feels like I’ve kind of pushed out there. I’ve distanced myself. But by taking ownership of exactly what happened, what I would do differently, I always come out with it with something that I’m like, right, I’m going to do this. And that just gives me that little spur on. I’m not saying that I instantly rise from failure in this amazing kind of, woe is me, I’m going to move forward. I’m just saying, I just get up and take one step. That’s what the real thing is about business. As long as you’re moving forward and you’re just taking one step, one bite sized chunk, it doesn’t really matter how fast you’re moving, just as long as you’re still moving.

So don’t stay in the past. If you want to rise from failure, chart it out. And as I say, please, please, please just go and brain dump it. Hold onto some situations that may be still feel quite raw and start thinking, right, okay. What was my fault? What was out of my control? What do I bring from this situation? How can I nuture myself from this? How can I heal? And how can I improve myself? Because sometimes it could just be stepping away, taking some time out and looking at you. Because sometimes the way that we feel in business will impact the success of [inaudible 00:11:31] projects. And they do.

Performance is based on motivation & mindset

And I say sometimes, I mean, our performance is based on our motivation and mindset. So it’s about self check and self care. And for me, this has been a very difficult thing and something I’ve been working on for the past year, really heavily. Taking time out, time-blocking, having carefree time, looking at coaches I work with, looking at all aspects of what makes me feel safe, certain and secure. And these are things that really important to me as a person. And this is my personality. I’m very, very pragmatic. I like planning, but I’m not really good at the attention to the detail. So I’ve started to really understand myself from this and what I’m good at and what my genius zone is. And when I feel the most happy and invigorated.

I was kind of tracking my, I suppose energy, and this is something a coach told me. To really be aware of how I felt day by day. And this is honestly something I never did. I think because of my upbringing, it was just get up, get on with it and do what you do. And it’s been quite difficult to kind of start thinking, oh, how do I feel today? But by tracking my energy and looking at what I did that day, I’ve started to understand what I really enjoy; what I do and maybe don’t enjoy that much, but seeing things that really reinvigorate me rather than draining me and then removing anything that I feel drained from and just switching it up a notch and looking at it differently.

Summary

So this podcast honestly, is just about how to rise from failure and how to get past things and dumping them and moving on. Because if you haven’t dealt with it, it will be holding you back. It will be impeding your performance and potentially all those amazing aspirational goals. It could be limiting you because you have a limiting belief. So you might not ever get to that point on something that you’re really truly achieving what you know you can. And it’s about understanding your self worth. We all fail and let’s embrace it and let’s come together and talk about it. And this is what I want you to take from today. Chart it out. If something is hindering you, deal with it. And as I say, there’ll be something that comes out of each situation, but you have to feel some of that emotion.

Be vigorous in terms of the way that you go into this and just think, right, I’m going to kind of get it all down and it’s a cathartic feeling, but you will come out the other side of this feeling really, really amazing. You will start to brain-dump things, release things, move past it. But give yourself the biggest pat on the back for one thing, because if you failed, you know that you took that step forward. You know that you started where some people never even took that chance. And that makes you very, very special.

So I shall see you on the next podcast. It will be Episode 49 and we are here every Thursday. So don’t forget to come and follow me. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it, @DawnMcGruer and you can find all the details at dawnmcgruer.com. Thanks very much for listening and have a super week.

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