The older I get, the more clearly I can see how FAILURE is really just opportunity in disguise. Nobody wants to fail, but the way you leverage your failures can really help guide you on your path towards greatness. 

I remember a time in my life when I saw failure as a really bad thing and I would dwell on failures. I would think I wasn’t good enough and it was very hard to get back up after falling short. But when I realized that everyone fails, even the people I looked up to the most, it gave me a new understanding of failure. Now I see how those shortcomings can actually give me perspective in the long run.

Now when I do anything. I have an increased amount of self awareness and I use all failures as an opportunity to learn. I examine what went wrong and ask myself questions like:

• What did I do wrong?
• Where was I most unprepared?
• Where can I improve?
• What should I avoid next time?
• What is something I see now that I didn’t during the process?
• What are my weaknesses?
• What are my biggest fears of doing this again?
• What am I going to do from now until the next opportunity?

Now this takes my loss and turns it into a tool for growth that will help me build towards my next win. If you can get detailed with this process, you can build a strong roadmap for yourself and others to follow. Remember, the people who are the best in the world were the ones who failed the most and kept going. And honestly ALLOWING YOURSELF TO FAIL relieves the FEAR OF FAILURE which can single handedly hold us back from anything we want to do in life. 

Many people don’t even start on a path towards their true dreams because of a fear of failure. While others are using their failures for fuel to project them into the life they want to live. So EMBRACE IT! Embrace failure, test new methods, and LEARN from your mistakes. Use failure as data for the next experiment and stay persistent. With this mentality, your failures will only bring you closer to your proposed goal, and that is such a good feeling.