“Remember, there are two benefits to failure: First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.” Roger von Oech, Creativity expert

Failure gets a bad rap, doesn’t it? It’s hard, given all we see and hear, not to think of a failure as proof that we’re inadequate—lacking in something, isn’t it. When something doesn’t work out, we feel deflated.

And yet, there’s a different way to think about and process a failure. When something doesn’t workout in our writing our in brining our writing out into the world, we can reframe failure and turn it into a friend instead of a foe. It’s not that hard to do. it all comes down to a little creative wordsmithing: Let’s attach a few additional words to failure and see what happens.

Here’s what I mean—let’s replace the word “failure” with:

Feedback: When you think of failure as feedback, it instantly transforms it from a liability into an asset. Suddenly you have something valuable, something positive you can work with. “Feedback is the breakfast of champions, “ according to my good friend and mentor, Coach Mike Tully. Why, because it points you in the right direction—it shows you what needs to change for you to succeed.

Learning: “There’s no losing, just learning”—that’s how my good friend and mentor Dr. Rob Gilbert* approaches losing from a sports psychology angle. Once we have feedback, we can learn from it. Learning is a positive skill—we take what we’ve learned and apply it.

Improving: Just yesterday’s, on his “Success Hotline,” Rob Gilbert came up with another word we can apply to a failure. As he put it, “There’s no losing, there’s just improving.” I love this! It’s even more proactive. It takes what we gain from failure a step beyond learning because when we improve, it’s because we’ve applied what we’ve learned to make a positive change, whether on the playing field or on the page.

OK, here’s a visual we can all work with: Think of failure as a kite. Now attach three tails to it: feedback, learning, and improvement. Now catch the wind on your next project and see your kite soaring high into the clouds. Our takeaway: Failure, powered by feedback, learning and improvement can turn into soaring success. So let’s tuck these four words into our writer’s kitbag and pull them out as needed while we all write on!

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