Hi girl, welcome to Soul CEO; a podcast for women who know they’re destined for more. I’m Lindsey Mango and I’m going to show you that you can have it all and teach you how to get it by becoming the CEO of your soul, life, and business. Let’s get started.
Hello, how are you all? I hope you are having a beautiful week. I think we are at episode number 20, which is just so crazy to think about. Like, some of you guys who have been listening since week one have had me in your ear talking to you for 20 weeks straight, which is so cool. So I just want to celebrate you guys for that and thank you so much for your loyalty. I am so grateful.
This entire podcast is for your guys and about you, so thank you for being here. And if you are new, welcome. I’m happy you’re here. Go and listen to some of my previous episodes. I just want to welcome you with open arms and let you know that you are loved and we are so excited to have you here, part of the Soul CEO community. So thank you guys so much.
Now today, I’m going to talk about something that probably makes some of y’all’s skin crawl and it is the big F-word. No, not what you just thought; it’s failure. So I think failure is such an important thing to coach on, to talk about, because when you go big in life, failure is a part of that. That’s a part of the growth, that’s a part of the process. And it’s so interesting to me because so many people don’t ever take action on their dreams and the things that they really want because they’re so afraid of failure, which is so crazy to think about.
Like, the reason why we don’t go after what we really want in our lives is because we are afraid of failing. So I think it’s so important to talk about it, to talk about how you can prepare yourself for it, how you can work your mind through it when it does happen so that it’s not so scary. Like, one of the biggest things that I find with so many people when I ask them what their greatest fear is, they say failure.
And I ask, so what does failure mean? And really, a lot of people talk about failure as not hitting your goal. But I think it’s so powerful to reframe this and look at it in a different way because to me, failing is definitely going to happen when you’re playing big in life, when you’re going all in. like, it’s just a part of the journey and a part of learning.
And to me, failure is just not trying. Like, if I don’t try, I don’t ever give myself the opportunity to learn and grow and get to the next level, so avoiding failure to me is actual failure. Like, not hitting a goal, yes, it is considered failure, but I think that that is a huge part of the process and totally necessary. And I think it’s so important to share all pieces of my journey. And when this episode comes out, it will probably be almost a month, I would say, after I cried on a Facebook live sharing the fact that I had failed to hit a huge goal that I had for myself and how I really believed I was going to accomplish it, like deeply.
My heart really felt it, it knew it, I showed up like it, I believed it, and then it didn’t happen and I failed. And it totally sucked. Like, I’ll be honest, failure is not fun, but it happens to all of us and I like to use the example – I forget where I heard it – but I like to use the example of, let’s just say, a kid when they’re like a baby, when they learn to walk.
Think about the goal of learning to walk. And if on the first time that they failed, meaning they fell down and didn’t walk, they decided this isn’t for me, I’m a failure, or made it mean something terrible about them, would they ever have gotten up to try again? Probably not, right. But learning to walk, you have to learn to fall and then get back up. In fact, what’s so cool is they actually build the strength to walk by falling and then learning how to get back up.
So it’s actually a part of that process in order to get to the goal of walking. So let’s take that same thought process and let’s apply it to life and business. Failing is what makes you stronger in order to show up at a different level to get where you want to go, and it’s so important. And think about it, just by being afraid of it, it’s going to keep you from not actually getting what you want in life. Like, not trying is definitely going to keep you from getting what you want. Just failing is going to give you the opportunity to grow and get to the next level.
So what happens when I fail or what happens when some of my clients fail? They’ve all failed in some capacity. Some of them are probably listening to this and laughing because they totally know they’ve failed too. But here’s the thing; failure is just a neutral event. Like, it’s just a thing that happened. But what we make it mean about is and the thoughts we have about us and what it means about our business and about our success, all the mind drama, is why it hurts so badly.
And that just comes back to your thinking, right. So if you decide, I went after this big business goal and I didn’t hit it, I failed totally. I said I was going to get 20 people in a group, I ended up with two, whatever it is, that means I’m a failure, right. Then what you make that mean in your head is why it hurts so badly, so you make it mean I’m not good at what I do, people are going to judge me, what are they going to think about me, right.
Like, I’m probably reading some of you guys’ minds because I have all these thoughts too and I have to do thought-work on it. And my goal was to get 20 women and I ended up getting eight, I think, seven or eight, and they’re all amazing and they’re all the perfect fit and I do believe now that this all happened for me exactly as it should, but it’s a part of the process.
I did fail. I didn’t hit the goal. Essentially, failure means just the omission of hitting a goal and so the thing is, you can change the way that feels in your body. You can change the way you look at it. So it’s okay to feel bad when you don’t hit a goal. It’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay to feel all these things. But what’s not okay is to make it mean something about you.
Making it mean you are a failure is not what it has to mean. It could just be a part of your process.
So how do I shift my perspective when I actually do fail? So there are three questions that my coach taught me that I ask all of my clients that I ask myself whenever I take any action in business actually; this isn’t just about failure but is really powerful when you do fail to use them as well.
So what are those three questions? What worked? What didn’t work? And what do I want to do differently? And I will tell you guys that it has to go in that order. Like, when you fail, your brain is going to want to be, like, “Well this went wrong, this went wrong, this went wrong.” That’s not how this works.
You’re not allowed to use this method if you do that. You have to start with what worked. What could you celebrate about this process? What went well? What worked for you? And then get into what didn’t work and what do you want to do differently, because if you ask yourself these three questions whenever you take an action in your business, especially when you fail, you’re going to know what you want to do differently next time, and then it becomes the exercise of strengthening your mindset and your process and your business strategy for the next time.
Like, think about it. Like there, when I think back to when I started my business, I launched so many groups and programs that were not successful, but every step, I decided, let me try something different. Let me do something different, and then I got through it until I got to the point where things started going well and I wasn’t failing anymore.
And all of those steps helped lead me to that success. Like, think about it too. Think about dating. Think about how many guys you dated before you met the person of your dreams or your husband or wife or whatever it is, right. Like, in the moment, you might have felt like it was a failure when a relationship ended, but now, if you’re happy, or if you’re not, you could see that this is potentially an opportunity and when you do become happy and you find that person and you find that relationship that you’ve always wanted, you’re able to look back and be grateful for them, right.
They helped you learn, they helped you grow, they helped you become who you were in order to meet this person. And that’s exactly the same thing in business. So failure doesn’t have to be this thing that is shunned that you just can’t allow for yourself. It can be this thing that you accept with love and grace and sometimes pain and hurt, and that’s okay too.
There’s space for that too. But also using for you to learn and grow because if you’re just committed to getting to your goal and continuing to strive, I can promise you, you will fail. And they will be the best learning opportunities you have ever experienced. They’re necessary in order to become who you need to become, in order to have the life that you want to have.
So what if you just reframed failure and decided that it was a learning opportunity every single time that it happened and that it was necessary, not to cause yourself to fail on purpose but to see that there are going to be little failures throughout your entire process.
I actually remember listening to a podcast by Brooke Castillo. I think it was her podcast. And she was talking about how someone that she worked with actually tries to fail five times; like it’s their goal every month is to have five major failures.
Like, when I heard that, that makes my stomach turn. I definitely have work to do there because the thought of that is kind of scary, but think about how big you have to go, how big you have to play in your life and business to be willing to fail five times. Because think what could be successful if you were willing to fail five times – not purposely failing but going so big that some of it becomes a failure and some of it is a success. Like, that’s scary. But think about how insanely fast you could grow.
So what if you were willing to fail five times every month in big, big ways? Like that is going to be so powerful because think about what you’re going to learn in the process, who you’re going to become in the process, and what successes you’re going to have in the process.
So don’t be afraid of failing. It’s a part of your process. It’s a part of playing big in life. Just go back to the questions, what worked, what didn’t work, what do I want to do differently every time it happens. Grow your strength, grow into the person you need to become who has the life that you want. It doesn’t have to be a scary word. It doesn’t have to mean anything about you, it could just be the opportunity to learn and grow.
So I hope this helps. This definitely helped me when I had my moment of frustration and sadness when I didn’t hit my goal and when I still don’t hit my goals sometimes and it’s such a huge learning and growing opportunity. So I love you guys. I hope you have a beautiful day. Get out there and fail and have some amazing successes too and I hope you guys have an awesome week. I’ll talk to you soon.
Thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode of Soul CEO. If you want to go even deeper into how to create a vision of the life you really want, how to become the woman in that vision and how to deal with the roadblocks we all face along the way, head over to lindseymangocoaching.com to get your free training of my High-Vibe Formula.
