Resilience expert shares simple four step plan that can help EVERYONE,
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Fear of failure stops millions of Britons from starting something new – but what if I told you that things going wrong could actually prove to be your biggest motivation?
Reminders of what did not come to fruition can leave us choking on a toxic smog that deters us from giving things another try, or even embarking on new adventures and endeavours.
Failure-related guilt can be so heavy that it feels like we have been pulled into an abyss from which there seems no escape. Like an invisible rope, it ties you to the past and stops you moving forwards.
If you let it, failure can disrupt your life weeks, months, years, or even decades after the event or situation that went wrong.
I’ve spent thirty years working as an organisational strategist and facilitator, and I’ve had more than my fair share of failures, mishaps, disappointments, let downs and catastrophes.
But I also know first hand that there is a freedom and lightness on the other side of failure if we’re willing to do the hard work to get there.
Through my own bruising encounters with life’s faceplants, I have developed a four-step method called FREE – Focus, Reflect, Explore, Engage – which gives you the tools to change the course of our lives.
It is inspired by the Japanese practice of hansei, which treats self-reflection and self-improvement as a virtue, and recognises that our mistakes have the potential to provide solid foundations for our next attempts.
Focus on the Failure
Studies have found many of us would literally prefer an electric shock to sitting quietly with our own thoughts.
We can’t fix what we can’t see. The first step is to shine a light on our failures rather than hiding from them, numbing them or pretending they don’t exist.
Most of us keep our biggest failures close to our vests. They are deep, dark secrets that drain our mental and even physical energy.
As philosopher Paul Tournier wrote, ‘Nothing makes us as lonely as our secrets.’ That silence builds walls around us, blocking the authentic connection we crave most.
Focus asks us to sit with the discomfort just long enough to sort the ‘what’s so’ from all the emotional stories we’ve wrapped around the failure.
Think of it as recording what a video camera would have captured: just the facts, not the blame.
Research shows that people who practise focused reflection outperform those who simply double down on practice – but it’s not always an easy or comfortable process.
Two well-researched methods help: writing about our failures, which opens doors to new ways of seeing our world, and sharing our stories with a trusted confidant, which releases the hold that secrets have on us.
The goal is the same, get to ‘what’s so’ rather than ‘who’s to blame.’
Reflect on Your Reaction
While we are bringing our failures into the light, it’s time to take a closer look at how we actually responded.
When failure strikes, our brains can get emotionally hijacked, sending us into autopilot: fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
These fear-based reactions happen so fast we rarely notice them, yet they form patterns that repeat across our lives, tripping us up in the same ways again and again.
We want to reflect on our reaction to the failure and the emotions present.
The emotions surrounding failure can vary wildly and deeply from mild discomfort or frustration to a deep dark depression or anxiety.
It’s important that we not only acknowledge this funk but also look closely at this impact.
Reflection invites us to examine the patterns in our responses honestly.
What did we set out to do? What happened? Why did it happen? What emotions showed up? And crucially, how did we respond or react?
By asking these questions, we begin to see where our expectations were wildly out of step with reality and how that gap triggered an outsized reaction.
Comparing ourselves with others, isolating ourselves and experiencing major life upheavals can amplify these responses further.
This is arguably the most important phase, because it is where real synthesis happens.
Reflection is the last thing most of us want to do when we’ve failed, yet it holds the keys to unshackling ourselves from failure’s grip.
Explore
Start by redefining what failure means to you. In our past, failure was the end, full stop. We felt yucky and made it mean something terrible about who we are.
But what if failure isn’t an obstacle on the path but instead lays a solid foundation for the future?
We can choose to see failure as a gift that allows us to improve, a guide showing us the path we are uniquely forging.
Next, learn to interrupt the emotional hijack before it spirals.
Something as simple as pausing to take a few deep breaths or an intentional pause can expand the space between a trigger and your reaction.
In that space lives your power to choose differently. We can also look ahead, anticipate where our expectations might trip us up and deflate them to realistic proportions.
Being prepared doesn’t prevent painful feelings, but it can significantly reduce the blast zone.
Engage in Flipping the Script
After some time doing the difficult work of reflection, it’s time to get ourselves back in the driver’s seat.
In the Explore phase we bring a fresh perspective to failure and in the Engage phase we are taking our options for a test drive.
Not everything will work, responses may land somewhere on the sliding scale from ‘hard pass’ to ‘meh’ to ‘wow, that actually worked’ and that’s perfectly fine.
Engagement means running small experiments, collecting data on what happens, and testing our assumptions. If the results move us closer to where we want to be, brilliant, keep going. If not, adjust and start the cycle again.
By limiting the blast zone with small, deliberate experiments we fail in manageable ways and learn quickly. Start just outside your comfort zone and build from there.
Problem solving becomes a mindset, not a chore. We embrace curiosity, ask open-ended questions and treat mistakes simply as information.
Over time, the more curiosity we bring to our lives, the thirstier we become to learn and grow.
And critically, we don’t do this alone, building a support network of like-minded people who celebrate risk-taking, regardless of outcome, and create a growth-oriented environment that sustains us for the long haul.
