Getting Pass Failure

July 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment

For most of us failure is one the most unwelcome experiences we ever have to bear. Failure depresses us, lowers our spirits and destroys our desire to take action. It can also makes us doubt ourselves, become angry or just leave us in a really bad mood.

Failure and Frames

In psychological terms, frames refer to your behavior and thoughts regarding or in response to an experience. When we take in consideration the manner in which failure was previously described, our failure frame can characterized by feelings of low self-worth, reluctance to continue to act and other non-beneficial responses.

Changing your Frame

In his book “Sleight of Mouth”, Robert Dilts describes the way in which our mental programming and nervous system are shaped and are reflected back to us in our language and language patterns. He goes on to state that our language not only shapes our experience, but it also frames it by bringing certain aspects of reality into the foreground while leaving other aspects in the background.

Dilts teaches that solutions to many problems people face can be solved by simply changing your focus, that is, changing your frame.

The Failure Frame

For instance, for you to mitigate the feelings and quash the behavior brought on by failure frame, this frame must be replaced by a frame that changes what you are focusing on when you experience failure. To deal with the failure frame Dilts suggest you change the failure frame to one called a feedback frame.

In the feedback frame, the experience that was perceived as failure is now perceived as just feedback of your actions. By viewing the experience as feedback, the unpleasant feelings and unproductive behavior that followed the failure frame are diminished if not quashed altogether. The belief being that the feelings and behavior that is associated with feedback is less emotionally traumatic then those associated with failure.

How effective is it?

When I first tried this technique, I was hoping the negative feelings of failure would just disappear. It didn’t. But, the strategy did help me to have a more positive outlook about the situation, especially when I asked myself what could I learn from the incident.

Also, the more I applied it in my life, the easier it became to think this way. There are times that I still slip back into my old way of thinking about an experience as failure. But when I remind myself to view it as feedback and just as one of life’s lessons, the unpleasant feelings immediately subsides.

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Getting Pass Failure

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