Episode 228: Reframing Failure In Your Design Business

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, then it’s likely you’ve had your fair share of mishaps, missteps, and mistakes. Those failures are a normal part of life and are expected on your journey to success. In today’s episode, I’m sharing how you can reframe failure in your design business. Feeling Failure without Letting it Define You Every single person will experience failure in their lives, careers, or business. Where most people get stuck with experiencing failure is that they let it mean something about them. Whether it brings on feeling of shame, guilt, or just negative emotions, it then becomes a negative narrative that holds them back. That’s harmful to us—emotionally and mentally. It eventually impacts our self-worth. Your successes and failures have nothing to do with how valuable and worthy you are as a human. Reframing Failure Through years of experience in my business, I want to share a few mindset shifts that I’ve made over the years that have taken failure from being something that I avoided and hated to something that works as a tool and serves me. If these mindset shifts do not resonate with you or serve you, please do not carry them with you. These are simply my own personal experiences and shifts. If you’re looking to take a deeper dive into today’s topic, I encourage you to listen to episode 122, where I discuss conquering the fear of success and failure with my brother, Josh Burger, a licensed professional counselor. Let’s dive into the different ways and tools I’ve found benefit in reframing failure as a mindset. Therapy If you’ve been around for a while, you know that I’m a fan of working with a therapist to talk through and address different topics in my life. Whether it’s a goal you’re trying to achieve, some history you’re looking to overcome, or just seasonal shifts in your life, therapy is a beautiful way to address your needs and mindset by offering an outside perspective. Through therapy, I have been able to understand and manage my emotions that come with failure, in turn using it as a tool to grow and move forward. Accepting That Everyone Fails Failure is a normal part of life, but it’s easy to forget that. When we fail, we’re hit with the shame, guilt, and negativity that comes with it. Consider everyone you know—at some point we’ve all failed. We’ve experienced those emotions. I want you to remember that you are not alone. View Failure as a Tool Failure is a lesson, not a loss. Once you’ve given yourself time to grieve your failure, you can then look at it objectively and dissect it little by little to determine what you can learn from it. What is the experience trying to teach you? Then rather than it being a dark mark on your timeline, you can make it a building block for growth. Failure is an Opportunity for Growth Growth is uncomfortable, but failure can lead to an opportunity for growth. If we’re choosing to view failure as a lesson and not a loss, that can be this process that refines you. How Are You Handling Failure? Recall a time where a biz bestie failed, how compassionate are you for them? You’re holding space for them and reminding them that this doesn’t reflect on them. What would it look like to talk to yourself in that same way?