One thing I see often and it makes me so sad is when people give up on their goals because they feel like they’ve failed or things aren’t going to plan.

The journey to achieving a big, amazing goal is likely to be paved with few setbacks or failures along the way. This doesn’t mean you should just throw up your hands and say ‘Well I tried, it wasn’t meant to be.’

You need to know how to develop resilience and bounce back!

If you give up every single time it gets a little tough or something doesn’t quite go to plan, you’re never going to achieve anything you want to achieve in life.

Experiencing failure isn’t the end. It’s an awesome opportunity to learn lessons and bounce back stronger than ever.

I want to share a story with you about what I learnt from one of my own failures.

When I was doing my little project to exercise every day; it started off for 30 days. Then it kept evolving until the goal was to exercise every day for 365 days.

I got quite a fair way along, around two thirds of the way along… then I missed a day.

I was devastated.

I remember very clearly, I was in Heathrow airport in London and I nearly burst into tears when I realised I’d missed a day. I’d been working so hard and I’d done all the right things, but then I still screwed up. I missed a day and I was ready to give up!

It didn’t work out. I felt like a complete failure, like it was the end. I felt totally defeated and didn’t want to do it anymore.

Then my husband said some really amazing things to me at that moment. He said:

Are you really going to throw away all of those days that you did something amazing because you missed one day?

Are you really going to give up now?

Don’t you think you’ve achieved more than somebody that never got off the couch and moved their body?

Does it really matter if it’s 365 days in a row or if you miss one day?

And he was dead right.

The next day I got on with it. In fact exercised twice, because that little OCD part of me wanted to catch up! I learnt some good lessons from that experience…

Failure can make you more committed and focused

Reaching any goal, especially one that may take months or years to achieve, requires serious commitment. When I missed that day of exercise, once I pulled up my socks and got on with it, that setback actually made me more committed to achieving the goal.

It made me realise how far I’d already come and what a waste it would be to throw it all away.

You have to programme yourself to bounce back. You have to programme yourself when things don’t go to plan, when things don’t go the way that you want them to go that it’s not the end of the road. You need to keep pushing through.

If you feel like you’ve failed in reaching a goal or experience a setback, take some time to write down all the things you’ve achieved and overcome to get to this point.

Big things, little things, anything you’ve done so far to push towards your goal.

Your list may surprise you. You feel like a failure at the moment but look how much you’ve actually achieved. Read it over a few times and use it to reprogram your mind to keep going. Don’t let all your effort so far be for nothing just because things haven’t gone to plan.

Are you three feet from gold?

There’s an amazing saying I love:

“Don’t give up three feet from gold”

You never quite know when you’re about to hit the jackpot, when you’re about to have a massive breakthrough. The moment when success comes in a way you could never imagine.

You won’t know if you give up. You could be three feet from gold.

Become resilient

Unshakable resilience will get you through even the biggest failures. Resiliency is the key to not giving up and you need to build it like a muscle.

Take the moment and acknowledge the pain you feel from the failure. Recognise the loss, and the disappointment, then you look at the lessons you’ve learned.

Look at why didn’t it work, where did you mess up? What changes can you make to minimise the chance of it happening again. Make the changes and move forward. Focus on what you need to do the next day to get back on track, then the next day after that.

Move forward a day at a time, a baby step at a time.

There’s another saying I love – I’m full of them today! – your windscreen is bigger than your rear vision mirror because you only need to glance back. Check your surroundings, look at the lessons learned but then focus on what’s in front of you.

The moment you let that feeling of failure, lack of self belief and lack of confidence creep in, it’s all over. So you’ve got to have some mechanisms in place to help you to look at it, learn from it and move on.

Move on, bounce back and have an amazing and even more successful time next time because of all the lessons that you’ve learned.

Now you know what to do, I don’t want to hear about anyone quitting too early when they’re three feet from gold!

Have you overcome failure? I absolutely love hearing stories of people who’ve bounced back and achieved amazing things because they stuck with their goals. Please send me a quick email and share your inspiring story!

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