Here is a key to reaching and exceeding your goals: Embrace Failure as Necessary for Success. I have known my fair share of failures on my financial independence journey and my ongoing quest to live a passion-driven lifestyle. Let’s face it, failing at something you put great effort into feels like crap. You can’t help but feeling like you let yourself and maybe others down in your failure.

I don’t know about you but when I think about my failures they are seared into my brain. I learned more from them than many of my successes. The funny thing is I wasn’t depressed, hurt, or feeling discouraged when I started thinking about the importance of failure today. I was feeling happy and was counting my blessings. It came to me that many of my blessing are because of failing at trying something while pushing myself.

• I am blessed that I can bounce-back from failure and negative feedback.  I do this by being able to change course and continue on. Realizing any feelings of embarrassment or of being hurt were just feelings and would soon pass. If the challenge or quest was worth doing and I experienced a failure it doesn’t necessarily mean the challenge or quest should be killed. Just adjust and keep moving forward.
• I am blessed to have failed and allowed to fix things myself so that I could learn from my failures. Nobody rushed in to save me. I felt abandoned when it occurred but I am stronger for it. It is now one of my strengths that I don’t ever look for a rescuer.
• I am blessed to be able to recognize that failure is always a possibility in anything that I attempt of greatness so that I consider all contingencies before going forward. To reach great success I know I have to take risks and accept failure, not be frozen to inaction because of a fear of failure.

In order to reach success I believe you have to challenge yourself and go beyond your comfort zone but do so leveraging your strengths.

I have lived my retire early and often passion-driven lifestyle for five years now and there have been a few failures that I learned immensely from. Not failures in the plan or quest but in the way I handled some things. It is something that makes me wonder about destiny and fate. Had I not had failures my life would have taken a totally different direction. That is what makes this all an adventure.

Five Tips to Embrace Failure as Necessary for Success

1. Be an optimist and surround yourself with like-minded people. Keep people around you who can be honest and push you to focus on lessons learned from any failures instead of dwelling on the failure itself.
2. Be a root-cause failure analyst. If you experience a failure then something went wrong somewhere. Figure out where that was and make adjustments or corrections, then move forward.
3. Set goal timelines and reflect on successes, failures, and all of your lessons learned. I like bi-annual quest reviews but consider what works best for you whether monthly, quarterly, etc. Recognize the effort and any pain experienced. Recognize and mentally celebrate your personal growth.
4. Document your failures. Not to dwell on them but to acknowledge what didn’t work or what errors were made. I recall reading somewhere that all of Edison’s light bulb failures were considered successes in how not to do it. Think the same way.
5. Embrace Failure as Necessary for Success. Nobody goes through life without failure so accept that mistakes will be made and learned from. It is an important part of our personal growth.

Whether it is advancing your career, making a career change, starting a business, retiring early, reaching financial independence or any life challenging quest, there will be failures.

Have you encountered and bounced back from failures on your own journey?