“How do I not fail at running a business?”
That’s the question I was recently asked. And we’re gonna talk about…what even is FAILURE? How do you avoid it at all cost? I know this is going to sound really cliche – but failure is not an option. I don’t want you to even give yourself failure as an option. “Failure” is typically a meaning that you give to an unknown set of circumstances where you would walk away from your business…
But starting today, I want you to redefine what failure means to you.
What Does Failure Mean To You?
The words that people use often give me a hint to some underlying beliefs that they have. So when someone asks how to avoid failure, I go, “Hmm, I wonder what in their past made them so deathly afraid of failure – that they want to avoid it at all costs.” So often, we let the fear of failure dictate almost every decision that we make, trying to avoid it. So instead of pursuing success, or seeking out the positive things that you want to feel and experience – we are coming from a place of scarcity and fear, trying to avoid a painful situation like being a failure.
I want you to start to challenge how you assign the meaning to failure. If you assign failure as bad or negative – then yeah, you’re gonna want to try and avoid it at all costs. But how’s that working for you? Is that a good feeling?
Do you want to spiral out of control every time an event happens? Like when a client cancels, you think
“Oh, my God, that means that I’m not getting that money today. And bills are already tight.”
“ What if I’m not really cut out to do this?”
“Maybe Mom was right…”
“Who do I think I am to do this?”
YIKES.
This is the underlying belief system you have running in your head that then determines what actions you take.
Re-Assign the Meaning of “Failure” Or Remove It Completely From Your Vocabular
Your external environment will match the beliefs that you have in your head. Meaning that if you take failure off the table, then all of a sudden we’re no longer afraid of failure because in our mind it doesn’t exist. We can feel empowered and take back control over our thoughts, to assign a different meaning to the word failure, or even take it out of our vocabulary completely. The way that I do this is I never look at anything as a failure.
You’re either going to get the RESULT THAT YOU WANT, or the LESSON YOU NEED. Therefore with those two outcomes, no matter the situation you go through, failure is not one of those options.
You’re either going to learn the lesson that you need to learn in order to get the result that you want… or you will get the results you want. Either way YOU WIN. Either way, you are that much closer to that end result you want. It doesn’t mean that you failed because you didn’t get the result that you wanted. There’s clearly some learning lessons or some information that you didn’t have prior to this situation going down. But now that you’re on the other side of it – on the failure side, if you will – you now have more information to make a different decision. And keep trying different decisions, because you will keep getting closer. Focus on Progress over Perfection.
So for failure, choose to see that your mistakes are working for your better good. And that you’re actually one step closer to the exact results that you want to experience. How much better of a self-talk conversation is that to motivate you in a time when you’re feeling disappointed?
Entrepreneurship is development on crack, because your business is a direct reflection of your own limiting beliefs and your mindset. It is a really empowering and also terrifying experience to go through. If your business starts to tank in a way that you don’t want it to go and you’re not getting the results you want, guess who’s responsible for that?
Not the economy, not the clients…even though we love to blame them for everything, right? But WHO is the one who built a business in that economy? Who was the one that chose to run a business in that economy? Who is the one that is attracting those difficult clients into the business?
It’s YOU.
Which means…you’re also the one that is empowered to cause change.
Anytime that we play the victim role – “It’s not my fault business is slow, it’s the economy!” – we lose our power. And that’s not a healthy place to be. It’s not a place that makes you want to change because you think you have no control over the outcome. So you just stay stuck, overanalyzing everything and never taking action.
How Do You Actually Avoid “Failure”?
So how do you avoid failure? That’s really up to you to no longer assign something as failing. If you don’t want to fail at business, don’t stop doing business. If you’re equating failure to your business shutting down, please know that if you get to the point where you are making the choice to shut your business down, that is your CHOICE. It is not something that happens to you, it is a choice you make. Nobody shuts your business down for you.
Except maybe the government….but you can still continue to run your business in a new way and find different avenues and ways to serve your audience and get them to pay you for services or products that you offer. There’s always a way around it. There’s always a lesson to be learned and a pivot to be made if you keep running against the same wall.
So here’s my challenge to you: for a whole day, test out running your business in a way where you’re not driven by fear of failure. Where you don’t make decisions based on will this action help me avoid failure or not. Remind yourself that you’re either going to get the result that you want or the lesson that you need. That is the mindset that you will approach everything with. Be mindful of the thoughts that are coming into your head, and change the narrative to say,
“Everything is working in my favor. I’m going to get the result that I want or the lesson that I need. But either way I win, therefore there is no failing”.
I love these conversations that we have in the DMS! So if you’re not already following me on Instagram, please do so at www.instagram.com/thelashpreneur and then send me a DM with what’s going on in your business.
