Do you alchemize your failures? Alan Stein, Jr. recommends...

Oh, yeah. I mean, we don't have to look very far back to look at any recent failures. It really just depends on how you define it. I mean, as far as mistakes and missteps and lapse of judgment, I mean, that happens every single day of my life. I mean, there's not a single day that goes by that if I chose to look backwards, that I wouldn't be able to say, I woulda, coulda, shoulda done this a little bit different. And that is the key, is anytime you have a misstep or a failure or whatever terminology you use, is to be able to pull the lesson from it so that you actually gain something moving forward. And one of the biggest shifts I've had to make in my life was when I was younger, I was programmed to believe that failure was bad and that it was to be avoided and resisted. And you know that if you got a bad grade on a test or you got cut from a team, like, those were bad things. And over time, I realized that I really had the wrong perspective, that those are all parts of the process. You know, the line to success and happiness is never linear and it's never straight. It's going to have all sorts of ebbs and flows. And really, both success and failure can be challenging to deal with. But failure tends to find ways to stop folks dead in their tracks. And it tends to discourage people and erode their confidence. And we have to be very careful to insulate ourselves and. And not let that happen. You know, for me, my number one goal is to always do the best I can with what I have where I am. I want to do the best I can with what I have where I am. I want to take in as much information as I can, make the most educated decision that I can at that time, and give it my best effort with my best attitude. If I can say those things, then I'm not detached to the outcome. Whatever the outcome is, whether it's favorable or not, whether I'm happy about it or not, I'm no longer attached to it. And I know that I did everything within my control to make that thing work. And if it didn't, I don't personalize it. I don't let it make me think that I'm less than or that I shouldn't have tried or that I'm not good enough. I simply look at it as data and say, okay, this didn't work. How can we dissect this? And what can I do moving forward? I had heard a quote the other day that really resonated with me that that ties into this concept of failure really nicely. And that's our emotions are here to inform us, not to direct us. And that's why if you fail at something, there's nothing wrong with being disappointed, being sad, feeling angry or frustrated. Those are normal emotions. You just can't stay in those emotions, and you can't let them dictate your behavior moving forward. If you can detach from the outcome and as you said so perfectly before, live in the process, then you'll realize that that failure, it's just another rung on the ladder. It's just another step. It's nothing to worry about. Everything didn't collapse. That was just one area that didn't work. And how can we move forward? And I am a realist. I realize that they're. In the broad scheme of things, there are smaller failures and bigger failures. And, you know, but overall, they're all just reps. And that's all life is, is a series of reps. And we should all be trying to get in as many reps as we can. And any baseball player that goes up and strikes out and then is afraid to come up to bat again is never going to be a very good baseball player. They have to wipe that one off, move to the next play. And even if they strike out 10 times in a row, they have to believe that the next time they're going to be successful because they learned something from those previous strikeouts. And that's really the mentality that I think all of us have. Failure is nothing more than a repetition that didn't quite work. Let's unpack it and figure out how we can make it work moving forward. And that relationship with failure has certainly taken a huge burden off of me. I am so much lighter and happier now that I don't get so attached to things that don't work out. And it has allowed me to achieve higher levels of success because I just use them as a stepping stone.

Now, that process of, did I do the best that I can with what I have where I am? So did you actually. Do you have, like, a series of questions that you ask yourself? So you take a step, boom, it breaks. You're like, shoot, that was a failure. Not going so well, making sure that you're playing your game with that.

That.

That. Those phrases or those questions, or just kind of do a quick like, okay, how did I do? I feel good about my effort. Let me focus on the next rep.

It's a little bit of both. You know, for one I never tried to suppress or resist any emotions. I just let them flow through me. So if I try something and it doesn't work well, and my initial reaction is I'm disappointed or I'm frustrated, I let myself feel that and that's okay. And sometimes that's a couple minutes, sometimes that's a couple hours. But at some point then I say, okay, this isn't going to help feeling this way. So how can I look at this simply as data? How can I step back and be a spectator to my own emotions and figure out what. What I could have done differently to get a different result? And sometimes there's nothing you could do differently. You did everything in your power and the ball just didn't bounce your way that day. And those are the ones that you'll learn to. You'll be disappointed, but you'll learn to move on from. But if you do start to unpack it and you realize, well, I could have done this differently, I could have prepared this differently, I could have said this differently, then you just make note of it and you try it differently moving forward, because you're going to continue to keep getting reps at whatever it is that you're trying. So just don't let it paralyze you. And then if you try it again and it still doesn't work, you still have the choice on how you're going to frame that. And for me, I simply look at it more of, almost like a challenge of, all right, I tried to fix this Rubik's Cube. It didn't work. I tried it again. It didn't work. Okay, now it's me versus you, Rubik's Cube. I'm going to beat you. I'm going to come up with a way. And it's like, again, I take the personalization out of it. That to me is the most deadly part of failure is people, they confuse. I'm a failure with. I just failed at this. Those are not the same things. I attempted something, it didn't work real well. I failed at this. That doesn't make me a failure. You know, I can lose a game. If you and I were going to challenge each other in something, I can lose a game. To you. That doesn't make me a loser. Unless that's the terminology and self talk that I use when, oh, I'm not good enough, I guess I'm a loser. So we have to be able to separate the two. And. And I think what's given me a lot of comfort is being around these high performers and seeing how much they fail on a day to day basis in the unseen hours. I mean, many of them are crowned champions and they do some amazing things during the performance, but that's only because they've, you know, created such adverse conditions in their training and preparation that they're failing all of the time.

Hi, this is Michael, the head coach at Optymyze and I hope that you enjoyed that wisdom from one of our brilliant luminary guest faculty members. For more on Optimize Coach, head to www.Optimize.me. coach, it is time. Let's master ourselves, serve heroically and empower others to do the same. Closing the gap between who are capable of being and who are actually being more and more consistently expressing the best versions of ourself. That is how we change the world, one person at a time together, starting with you and with us today. And that of course, is what Optimize Coach is all about. Head to the site for more information and to join us. Class three starts soon.