7 Ways to DEAL With FAILURE - #7Ways

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have something special to offer, and I'd love to see it explode so that you can help change the planet. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to talk about 7 ways to deal with failure. As an entrepreneur, it's really hard, and you're going to get a ton of failure along the way. Not all your ideas are going to work out. You're going to fail and fail and fail and fail, eventually getting to your point of success, hopefully. But dealing with that failure can be really tough, and so today I wanted to share with you my 7 ways on how to deal with failure. Way number 1 is to change your perspective. One of the things that I've learned from watching so many videos of successful people across all different fields, from entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, actors, Everyone. People have had massive success in multiple fields. They all talk about failure as not being final. Failure is just feedback. Failure is to be expected. Failure is part of the process. Failure is a stepping stone to success. Fail your way to success. Failure. Failure is a part of the learning process. Success is moving from one failure to the next. To get past your failure, you've got to go through the failure. Success is merely the hangover of failure. You should seek failures. Learn from those mistakes and get smarter. And I think too many people fail the first time. They fail once, like you try something that doesn't work and you feel like, "I can't do this. I'm not meant to be an entrepreneur. I'm not meant to be an actor. I'm not meant to do that," because the first thing you did, you failed at. Expect to suck. Like, you will fail at the beginning. Whatever you touch is likely not gonna work the first time out, mostly because you don't know what you're doing yet. But you can pick it up and learn really quickly and expect to fail multiple times. Where if you find the people who've had the most success, are usually the people who failed the most. If you look at my channel, I failed with tons of series. I failed with more series than most people try, than even ever get going with. And so I learned from those failures, and thankfully not everything failed. Some of them worked, and we keep the winners and keep going and keep trying. And so I think if you were to watch videos, or for me it's the videos, but if you're reading books, or just surround yourself with people who have failed a lot and had success to help just shift that mindset that failure is not this one-time thing and then you suck as a human being, that you're going to fail. It's okay, it's normal, it's part of the process. And the more you fail, the more you're going to win. If you are surrounded by that and you start to believe that, you change your perspective, then you won't take it as personally and you'll see it as a win to help you get closer to where you want to go. Way number 2 is to fail more. The more you try anything, the better you get at it, right? So the more you fail, you're building the muscle. The more you fail, the more comfortable you get with it. And it's not that you always wanna fail and you just wanna be a constant failure your entire life, right? There will be successes along the way. But if you fail and it doesn't go well and then refuse to even try anything in the future, that's the ultimate failure. Right, and so getting comfortable with failure, not being defined by failure, not taking failure so personally, not taking failure as because this idea you have didn't work, that means that you suck as a human being, right? To be able to detach those two. The more you fail, the more you try, the more you get used to it, the less important the failure itself becomes and more important achieving whatever the goal is becomes. And so Just fail more. Try more things, fail again, fail again, fail again. And what you find is every time you fail, a little bit smarter, a little bit better. It's not doing the same thing the same way every single time, but you get a little bit better and you start to see that the failure wasn't as big and you're seeing more results and more results and more results. And so just practicing and failing and failing better consistently, you'll build that muscle and then it won't be as scary. Way number 3 is to practice being uncomfortable. A lot of times it's not the failure itself that we're afraid of, it's the failure in front of other people that we're afraid of. We're afraid of how our friends are gonna judge us, or our parents are gonna judge us, or how people on social media are gonna judge us. We're afraid of not the failure, but failing in front of other people. And so the more you can lose that, the more you can practice being uncomfortable and caring less what other people think of your successes or your failures or of you in general, then the less likely you're gonna carry that failure around and just feel like a terrible human being and feel worthless. You will release it. And so I try to build the muscle of whenever I feel uncomfortable in something, I'll step into the discomfort. Filming here at the start, right? It's like there's people walking by, there's people looking in the glass, there's people wondering what's going on. It was nerve-wracking at the start, but because I felt uncomfortable with it, I had to do it. I had to release it, and now I can walk in and doesn't matter, I'm used to it, right? The first time I filmed in public, same thing, I have to go out and do it. You know, I gotta, gotta release that uncomfortableness. And the first time I did it, I was walking on the street and then somebody came close, I kind of was quiet, and then they left, and then I could continue to film. And slowly, slowly, slowly, I got used to it where if somebody's watching, it doesn't matter, I'm okay with it, I don't care about their judgment. So again, the more you step into uncomfortableness as a general rule, if you ever feel yourself playing small because of somebody else's potential opinion— potential opinion, you don't even know what their opinion is, just their potential opinion of you— whenever you can catch that— a lot of times it's so subconscious that you don't catch it— whenever you can catch it, I encourage you to step into it. One last example I've told a couple times was when I was walking in the street and I'm listening to music and I'm dancing and doing, you know, big movements, and then I get to the corner of a busy intersection and I start, I start dancing small, then I stop because there's people around me and I was worried about their judgment. And so I didn't do anything. And when I caught it, I realized I will not play small because of their potential judgment of me. I'm not doing anything that is gonna be harmful to them, right? Like, I'm not going up in their face and causing a scene. I'm just having fun on my own. And so then I just started dancing even bigger on on the street corner because I needed to release that fear. And so getting used to being uncomfortable, when you feel the fear of discomfort, learn to jump into it, build the muscle, and you'll feel failure a lot less.

Tip number 4 is to believe in yourself. Failure is inevitable. It's part of life. It's going to happen. I have had many failures in my life. Anywhere from accidentally wearing a transparent dress to work to failing at a decade-long career. And that was a big deal for me. I remember walking away from a career that seemed so lucrative and so promising because I lost passion for it. And people around me started to question my sanity. They start questioning my decision-making, and they even turned their backs on me. And a lot of those people I called my friends at that time. And I remember sitting at the edge of my bed thinking to myself, "Wow, this is what life has become." I felt the lowest of lows because at that time I measured my success based on my finances and my social status, and I had neither. All I saw was darkness around me. But I had this tiny glimpse of hope and this tiny glimpse of light, and I believed in myself. I believed that I was going to pull through, and I did. I invested all my time into growing myself, to developing resilience, and I grew a thicker skin. And just a few years later, I was given an opportunity to start a business with Evan Carmichael, and that wouldn't have never happened unless I did walk away from that career all those years ago. And that's the thing, if you are experiencing failure right now, I know how it feels. There's darkness all around you, but remember there's something beautiful and amazing on the other side of your failure. And always, always believe in yourself.

Win number 5 is focus on the lesson learned. If you can find the positive in everything that you're doing, it makes it a lot easier to do it again. If you fail and it didn't work out, it's easy to stay in that negative down zone of, "I suck and this idea is never gonna work and I'll never be an entrepreneur." And you know, you just keep wallowing into this downward spicle. Spicle? Spicle? Cycle? Spiral? Spiral and cycle is spicle. We created new words here. You keep spiraling downwards, where if you can find something positive from it, okay, well, that didn't work, but I found this. I learned this about myself, right? The famous Edison, you know, who failed with the light bulb. I didn't fail 999 times, I found 999 ways not how not to do it, right? Like that famous quote. If you can learn a lesson from it, if you can understand that I learned something from here, then it's not a failure because you learned, because you grew, there was a benefit. So trying to find some kind of benefit from that failure can bring the optimism back up and get you back on the horse to go try and do something else. Way number 6 is have honest conversations. This is particularly for the people who are afraid of failing in front of other people, afraid of failing and being judged, whether that's your friends, the family, the people around you. Having an honest conversation, you know, if you are afraid to start your business because of what your mom might think or what your best friend might think if it doesn't work out, then I would sit down and try to have an honest conversation and say, "Listen, I really want to do this thing. I'm really scared. I don't know if it's going to work out. It may not work out. It's the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. And the thing that's preventing me from doing it is because I don't want to fail in front of you. I'm worried about your judgment and how you may see me." as a son, as a friend, as a brother, as a whatever the relationship is. I just want to let you know that this is a thing that's holding me back. Now most people will hopefully say, well, that's crazy. Like, if you want to do it, you should do it. I'm cheering you on. I'm going to support you, and I'd love to see you have the success. Some people won't, you know. Some people will say, this is the stupidest idea ever. What are you talking about? Like, don't go and be an entrepreneur. You're going to fail for sure. Yeah, so you may not get the result you want, but at least for me, at least trying, at least if there's a 40% chance of it working out, at least being able to release that demon and get their support and have them kind of cheering you on. And then when you do fail, because you will at some point, they have your back and they're understanding. Just in general, for relationships, any kind of relationship, communication is important. Instead of just playing a surface-level game, to really be vulnerable and share the things that are on our minds is super important. So it may not work out, but I definitely recommend having a conversation to at least try to get that win. And win number 7 is just to decide to live your life. Like, at some point you have to decide, this is my life. If I fail, it's okay. I cannot continue to live my parents' life, my friends' life, my culture's life. What people are telling me to do. When you are growing up, sure, when you're 3 years old, you know, you're, you're following your parents around, you rely on them for food and to survive. But when you're— pick an age— 16, 18, 25, 30, like at some point you have to say, "This is my life. I'm gonna do what I want to do, and if it doesn't work out, that's okay, but I'm not just gonna live my life according to your expectations." You know, like if you're worried about your mom's opinion and you're 40 years old, are you still gonna live your life by her? 50 years old? Like how much of your life are you going to waste living to other people's expectations instead of living your own life? And it just comes from deciding. Like, I am deciding that I am going to do this. It may work, it may not work. I'm doing it for me. I don't care about the opinions of the people around me. If you can't support me in me doing the thing that I want to do, then that's a problem, right? Then maybe you limit your access to them, or at least you don't talk about those things with them. But it doesn't prevent you from moving forward. Other people's expectations of you should not prevent you from playing the game you want to play. Because if you're just playing up to other people's expectations, you're going to be playing small your entire life. So it's just deciding to live your life. So those are my tips on the 7 ways to deal with failure. I made this video because Aniket asked me to. If there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a future 7 Ways video, Check out the link in the description, go there, cast your vote, have your say, and I just might do it. I'd love to know what did you think of the 7 tips, which one resonated with you the most, you're going to try and apply it in your life or in your business somehow. Leave it down in the comments below. Did I miss an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add, that you want to share with Believe Nation, add some value, add some love, leave it down there in the comment section below as well. I also want to give a quick shout out to MD McGill, aka Trident Lion, thank you so much for your support. Of my book, Your One Word, picking up a copy, doing a review, posting to Twitter. I really, really, really appreciate it, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. Hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.