Give Yourself Permission to Fail & Freedom to Learn

Hi everyone, I’m Brian Bratti with Bratti Innovation Group (BIG) and today I thought I’d step outside of my current Small Boss vs. BIG Leader series to offer some help on the BIG idea of giving yourself permission to fail & freedom to learn. If you’re like me, you’ve grown up with adults, teachers and bosses who applaud success but frown on failure. They praise you for the A’s, the great deals you’ve done and the trophies you’ve accumulated, but honest failure, well that can be another story. Worse yet, you’ve probably beaten yourself up as much if not more than they did and this is because we are all brainwashed to believe all failure, even those that involved honest hard work and good intentions, is bad and to be avoided at all costs. And sometimes, we even make the horrible mistake of transferring the notion a “failed” action into the toxic idea of a “failed” person. This is not only a disastrous undertaking, it’s also a downright lie. Here’s the truth: no worthwhile task is risk-free and therefore failure-proof. In fact, if you don’t have a reasonable chance of failure in your endeavors then I’d suggest you’ve either set the bar too low or set no bar at all. This is especially true for leaders. Leadership is in the business of risk. If you are completely risk-adverse, then you’ll not like leadership very much but more on that in a future article.

For now, understanding failure is a necessary tool for your growth and progress. So, with this in mind, consider making a very important and very intentional decision right now where you are as you read this: Don’t wait for anyone to give you permission to fail & freedom to learn. They won’t. And it’s not necessarily because they intend you ill will but because they are most likely focused on themselves and their agenda. That’s just the way the world works. The only one that can give you permission (and by extension, compassion) to try hard, risk failure and learn from the experience is you. If you don’t allow this for yourself then you have abdicated an important responsibility and freedom you have to yourself.

So, here’s the deal: if you want to grow and move beyond where you are right now to be all you can be with your God-given talents (and you do have God-given talents, even if it doesn’t feel like that after a “failure”) you need to look at risk and failure differently. You need to not only accept the risk of failure but (and this can be hard but certainly not outside of your abilities) you need to embrace failure as a inevitable and valuable learning experience when it occurs. That requires many things like disciplined thought processes and proper self-talk (more on that in future articles as well). After all, one thing is for certain, the only thing worse than falling off the bicycle is not getting back on and that requires a different perspective on the concept of “failure.”

Embracing failure and turning it into something productive is not an easy task but it is certainly doable if you set up the right parameters and accountability to mold that perspective into a habit that contributes to your highest good. Want to know about how you can give yourself permission to fail and therefore transform your self-thoughts on failure into empowering thoughts of success, personal growth and freedom, visit me at my website www.brattiadvisors.com for more details. I have tools that can help you move past failure to victory by turning what you now perceive as failure into a stepping stone for future success as you learn how to embrace the BIG idea of giving yourself permission to fail and the freedom to learn.