“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas Edison
Some of my favorite readings on the topics I covered in today’s episode on managing failure.
Reframing Failure as a Success
- Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett, PhD
- How Reframing Your Failures Will Actually Bring Success from LifeHack
Self-Talk
- Third Person Self-Talk Is An Effective Way To Reduce Anxiety And Regulate Emotions
- 4 Ways to Stop Beating Yourself Up, Once and For All
Thinking Like a Scientist
Atomic Habits by James Clear
What Are You Measuring in Your Life?
7 Habits That Can Help You Think Like a Scientist
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Transcript
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins, you'll experience as you change your life through improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi.
And today we're asking the question, how can we manage our feelings when we think we failed. So as you heard in the intro, I'm going to talk about failure today. Failure is something I think we can all say we've experienced. And as you'll see, in today's episode, the main message I want you to take away from this is that when you try something new, and it doesn't work out the way you expected or wanted to, you're not failing, you have not failed. If you try something in your EF coaching journey, and it doesn't work for you, you haven't failed, your coach hasn't failed. If you try something that I suggest in this podcast, and it doesn't work for you, you haven't failed. And the same goes for me. Creating this podcast is a risk, right? I'm taking a chance that I will fail to make something that is useful for people. But if I say something that you don't like, or you try something and it doesn't work for you, I haven't failed. I've just found an opportunity to try to find something else that might work.
Of course, this totally sounds Pollyanna ish, right? It's way easier said than done. If everything we tried worked, or we all felt totally fine with failure. I wouldn't be here talking about this today. EF coaches, therapists we they wouldn't have jobs. We'd all be on some tropical island drinking pina coladas and getting our feet massaged. Wait a second. Okay, nevermind. Sorry. That's just my dream.
Okay, back to reality, talking about failure. Okay, so what's the definition of failure? If you look online, or in a dictionary, you'll find something along the lines of a lack of success, or the inability to meet an expectation. So this definition might be the same for everyone. But how failure feels is going to be different. And as EF coaches, we often find that many people, when they first start on their coaching journey, are already feeling stressed about failing. We noticed a strong connection between failure and executive function challenges. Maybe we've labeled ourselves or maybe our children have been labeled as disorganized, or forgetful or bad at planning. But the way that I see it, is that you or your child just hasn't found the strategy that works best yet.
So if you're in coaching right now, or actually, if you're just a human being, you might already be feeling sensitive to the idea of failing. And maybe that's why you decided to listen to me today about talk about failure. So I'm going to share some ideas for managing this so called failure, as we always say, in coaching, small steps lead to big changes. So please don't feel any pressure to like, dive right into any of these strategies. Maybe just try one, or even just part of one, or maybe just think about it, write it down somewhere, tell someone you're thinking about it. I'm really not asking for a big commitment at all, just hear me out and maybe give something a shot in whatever way like feels right to you right now. There are a ton of different ways to manage how we react to failure. And I really don't want to overwhelm you. That's not what I'm here for.
So I've chosen three to cover today than those are reframing your failure as a success, self talk, and thinking like a scientist, these three strategies are kind of all interconnected. And trying one will often naturally just involve one or both of the others. So I'll do my best to explain each one. And like I just said, you can try them out and see what sticks.
Okay, so first up reframing. So you may have heard the quote by Thomas Edison, he said, I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. So instead of seeing failure as a lack of success, like the dictionary says, try to see it as that you successfully found a way that doesn't work. So last week, I was working with an adult client of mine who has a strategy that he uses to manage his anxiety about the week to come. So on Sunday night, he takes some time to look over and plan for the upcoming week. He has a bullet journal. So he writes down his appointments and his classes and for the work for his job. And last week, he didn't do this. He got busy, and he just decided that he wasn't going to do it. And as his coach, I was glad that he hadn't done it. And so we did some reflection in our session. We meet Monday mornings, so it was good timing. But we did some reflection and saw how and he saw how effective that Sunday night planning actually is. So So technically, this was a failure, right? He did not meet his expectation of Sunday night planning, but not doing it was actually super informative for him. So if we can change our view to see these failures as actually highly valuable, it can be so beneficial. It's hard work. I'm not saying it's easy, it is hard work to do this. But if you can try it, you might end up actually end up like being more open to new ideas than you ever thought you would be. So get excited when it fails. I kind of think there's almost more value in discovering what doesn't work than what does. I believe that we learn more about ourselves. And we're really forced to think creatively, right? The strategies that we end up using after we failed are more solid, because they're built from your response to what didn't work, a strategy that you try and works on the first time, I don't think is as rock solid, because you haven't encountered any variables that will test it. So failing, while trying new strategies in the end, I think makes it more durable system that can survive long term.
That being said, if you do find something that works for you, on your first try, that's awesome is so great. Just know that it might not always be there for you, it might not always work, just depending on what's going on in your life. And that's totally okay. I really like to think that these strategies that we know work for us but aren't currently working for us, are just patiently waiting. They're waiting for us when we're ready to go back to them. So keep that in mind.
All right, so next up self talk. So you can combine the reframing strategy that I just covered with self talk, and self talk, is the thoughts or the speech that we direct towards ourselves. So, you know, I know you know what this is when you talk to yourself either out loud or in your head. So and it can be positive and motivational? Like, yes, I did this, I can do this. I'm great at this. Or it can end up being negative. Oh, why did I choose that? Oh, I'm so stupid. So there are some strategies for managing this one that surprised me as being actually super useful for myself. And I really hope you guys try this, because I was really surprised at how well it worked for me, is talking to myself and the third person. And they've done research on this. And they found that it's actually super effective, it helps put a little distance between what you're saying and yourself. And it kind of separates out some of the emotions that are tied up in that self talk. And so for myself, and my own experience, I find that like motivational self talk is way more effective when I refer to myself as a third person, when I'm motivating myself with self talk. So for example, I'm a runner, and I'm not a fast runner. And when I'm trying to get myself going, I used to say I can do this, I can keep going and I recently changed it to Hannah, you can do this, Hannah, you can keep going. And I realized it's kind of like someone's on the sidelines, like on the sidewalk watching the race. And they're calling that out to me. And it just feels more motivating than me just telling myself that. So give it a shot, see what you think. I also find that it can help cut down on negative self talk. So like if I say to myself, ah, you know, why did I make that stupid decision or whatever. If I had said to me, if I say to myself, Hannah, why did you make that stupid decision, I realized I would never see that to another human being, you know, I would never use that word towards them. And I wouldn't ever talk like that with with someone else. So referring to myself in the third person has really cut back on negative self talk. So naming how you feel in your self talk can also be really helpful. So, you know, saying, I'm feeling very angry right now. Or Hannah, I think you're feeling very angry right now. So give it a shot, email me or send me a message and tell me what you think.
All right, next up, thinking like a scientist. This is one of my favorite strategies, and I really love working on this with my clients. So approaching something new by thinking like a scientist and approaching the new thing like an experiment. It lowers the stakes, it can be kind of fun. We know experiments often fail. All the things that have been invented in the world didn't magically work the first time. So these failures led the scientists to figure out what might work next time, it gives it gave them really useful information. So if we think like this, when we're trying new things, it can help us develop really great strong strategies. Another coach that I work with has this strategy that she uses with her clients when they're setting their weekly commitments. So if you're not familiar with executive function coaching with Beyond BookSmart, we have weekly commitments that we give our clients. So these are like a goal that they're working on for the week. Instead of calling it a weekly commitment, she calls it a weekly experiment, which like I said before, lowers the stakes, makes it feel less, makes it feel just less serious.
So trying something new is really important, right? So we have to get brave to try the new thing. But I believe the most important thing, the most valuable thing that we can do after we try the new thing is to reflect on it after you try. So when scientists run experiments, they don't just run the experiment, and then run it again. They ask questions. Why ask why get curious? Why did this happen? How did it feel? Did you notice anything? What worked about it? Most importantly, what didn't work about it.
So those are the three that I'm covering today, as you'll hear me say, over and over again, in pretty much every episode, that change is super hard, it takes a long time. And it's going to be filled with many of these so called failures. So to manage this, it can help to accept that it takes time, it can help to reframe these failures as a positive thing. And also reach out for help, whether it's from your executive function Coach, your friend, their mom on the playground, after school, your running buddy, whoever you know, will be there for you can be really helpful. If you do have a coach, that is a great person to support you through these new changes, of course, these new strategies that you're trying, it's really nice to have someone acknowledge your effort, you have someone going through the journey with you, it's also having that outside observer and that person is holding space for you, in this judgment free zone, have a coaching session, you know, they're not going to get upset with you. If you try something and it doesn't work, they're going to be excited for you. So take advantage of your coach, take advantage of the person in your life that you have that can support you, you know, as you learn and grow and find what works for you and discover what doesn't work for you. And then through that, find out what does.
I really hope that you found something useful in today's episode, I am now going to listen back on it and probably find a bunch of things I wish I had explained more clearly. Or I'll remember another idea that I should have included, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. And if I do, I'm going to talk about it in third person. And I'm gonna write down those ideas that I forgot and I'll be sure to include them in a future episode. So that's it for today. I'm so glad you're here and that you took time out of your day to listen. Be sure to check out the show notes for each episode on our website and subscribe to the podcast at beyond booksmart.com/podcast. We send out an email after every episode with links to resources and tools that we mentioned. Thanks for listening