How to Build Momentum After Repeated Failures
You are not a failure
I spent many years traveling around the world as a professional kiteboarder, not feeling good enough.
One of my biggest intentions in writing this substack is to normalize the feelings that many of us experience, such as feeling not good enough, not proud of ourselves, or that we should be further along by now. Doubts and fears about who we are are normal occurrences on this journey of humanhood.
🫶🏽I want to give you hope and encouragement that you are not alone and that you can learn to overcome these things.
Last week a reader wrote in with a question in response to one of my videos about celebrating failure. He resonated with the idea of removing the fear of trying by normalizing and embracing failure. But he got stuck around the idea of repeated failures.
How do you get over the cynicism and self-doubt that arises when you fail multiple times or at the same thing over and over again?
He gave the example of starting a fitness program but after a few weeks losing momentum and then quitting which led to feeling like a failure and then having to start all over again and again and again.
I wanted to take this opportunity to dive into this question and address it head on…
You are not a failure because you try something over and over again. All that means is that what you tried didn’t work.
Nothing more.
One of the key steps on this journey to more confidence, more joy and more expansion is allowing ourselves to try (and fail) without losing momentum.
Let’s dive into how to do that when cynicism and doubt start to arise when faced with the same problem or goal repeatedly. Or when we start to call ourselves failures.
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
-Winston Churchill
How to get over self-inflicted failures:
(to keep going, do better work in the world, have more impact, energy and enthusiasm and hit your goals!)
Stop judging yourself. It is totally hard and sucky to not hit your goals. You are allowed to feel like a failure and beat yourself up. I get it. When you try over and over again and it doesn’t work, it feels awful. Go ahead and feel like a failure for a minute. But after that grieving period, it’s time to get back to it because feeling sucky and like a failure will not help you hit your goals.
There’s a great quote that goes:
“The opposite of quitting isn’t just continuing on as you are. The opposite of quitting is recommitting with passion”. -Seth Godin
The first step in recommitting with passion (after the wallowing period) is to stop judging yourself. Stop calling yourself a failure. It’s time to change your story. Calling yourself a failure will not build motivation or momentum.
Create a new, positive story. I talk a lot about celebrating your wins and the fact that if you don’t start to acknowledge yourself where you are at, you will never feel like you are doing enough. Start telling yourself positive stories about who you are and what you can achieve. What you focus on expands and therefore if you focus on how poorly of a job you are doing, your brain 🧠
will find ways to keep delivering that story to you. When you begin to focus on your strengths and your worthiness and your capabilities you raise your confidence which in turn gives you the motivation and enthusiasm and determination to go after (and keep recommitting to) your goals.
Commit, right now, to a new mantra or affirmation or story that will help set you up for success.
A few ideas:
-I’m getting better every day
-I’m excited about this journey
-I am constantly learning
-I am doing a great job
-I can do hard things
-I can learn to get better at this
Do a post-mortem. Now that you’ve stopped judging yourself and you are ready to recommit with passion, it’s time to look at what worked and what didn’t work. The “failure” doesn’t mean anything about you, it simply means that what you tried didn’t work. Give yourself grace to keep trying. Take some time to analyze what worked and what didn’t on your journey.
In the fitness example, perhaps what worked was laying out your workout clothes the night before and scheduling your workouts on your calendar. But what didn’t work was not having an accountability buddy or you started telling yourself that you didn’t have enough time to prioritize working out and you let other priorities get in the way. Next, make a list of how you can set yourself up even more moving forward.
Visualize success. You can’t get to where you are going unless you know where you are going. Spend some time each day visualizing yourself achieving the goal. Focus on the new, positive outcome. How good will you feel with consistent strength training? Imagine how you would stand, how your clothes would fit, how. Once again, you are creating a new story that helps you BELIEVE that this is possible.
Build a new identity. Part of the reason we hold ourselves back is because our current identity doesn’t match our future goals or desires. We say we want to be millionaires or feel super strong in our bodies but we don’t identify as those things. How would someone who prioritizes health show up? How can you make working out and being healthy an ingrained part of your identity? List all of the ways that that person would show up.
Start small and work your way up. Confidence comes through action and momentum is built from small wins. Starting smaller and more achievable is better when you are building new habits because new ways of being and new habits are hard to create as humans. It takes time. Oftentimes, when the goal is too big we revert to not even doing the thing because it feels like too much. If you’re trying to come off the couch to run 5 miles, it’s much easier to back out because that’s a big jump. But if you commit to walking for just 10 minutes that feels much more achievable and therefore you are way more likely to do it.
I hope this helps you build trust in yourself. You are not a failure even though sometimes you feel like it. Take care of yourself. Believe in yourself. Relax, recommit and let’s go. You can do it.