What Was Your Fail Today?

I am a pretty positive person. I try to look for the silver lining, but if I am honest, I am much better at finding the silver lining for someone else than I am for myself. Can you relate?When something goes wrong, I tend to think about it…..and think about it some more. I try to shake it off, I try to let it go, but I still find myself replaying a failed professional learning session in my head or overthinking how others might have taken the tone of an email.

It can be exhausting to coach adults, can’t it?!

In my quest to be better, kinder and gentler to myself, I stumbled upon the wisdom of John Spencer while listening to a podcast on the way to work. He asked a simple, but incredibly powerful question: What was your fail today? At first, I thought I had heard him wrong as most of my attention was on the road. But I did not. He did indeed ask: What was your fail today?

I thought it was pretty ironic that I was listening to that very podcast to get away from thinking about my perceived failures and almost stopped listening.

But I’m glad I didn’t.

He continued to explain why it was such a powerful question and questioned why we think so negatively of failure in the first place. If we really think about it, failure makes us better. Through failures, read or perceived, we learn about ourselves, the results of particular actions and how we might make things go differently in the future. And if we find out how to make our future selves better, personally or professionally, is that really a failure after all?

Game changer.

If we change how we think about failure, from one of negativity to one of gratitude for having the chance to grow, then we change the culture for learning.

So, fellow coach, I ask you: What was your fail today?

Share your thinking and what you learned about failing forward to create a better version of yourself below!