If you have stumbled across this article, know that it’s Part 3, and then two others came before it ??

Previously, we dove deep into The Seven Stages of Failure. 

Looking at the first two stages in part one:

1. Shock
2. and Pain

and then in the second part, we dove into stages 3, 4 & 5.

1. Bargaining
2. Depression
3. and The Tipping Point

Here in this third and final installment, we bring the seven stages to a close… 

as well as shine a light on the real meaning of FAILURE.

A meaning that may surprise you, but could just change how you live life.

stage six: RECONSTRUCTION

Stage Six is all about RECONSTRUCTION

This is the phase of the process where you ACT.

• You do the work.
• You climb the mountain.
• You take the steps you need to.

In The Successful Mistake, I talk about—and share a series of amazing stories—of people reconstructing and rebuilding by:

1. Focussing and doubling down on what works
2. Diversifying and exploring a new direction
3. Expanding by taking a risk and making a leap
4. Starting again because what WAS no longer IS

Depending on the failure, its aftermath, and the situation … this stage can range from a period of excitement to utter overwhelm. 

The constant is ACTION and because you’ve already gone through the wringer, you’re now more likely to make the “right” decisions.

Not decisions without their own mistakes or issues.

Life still be life, after all … but decisions that lead you to growth and evolution.

While researching The Successful Mistake and doing all those interviews, and then after as I wrote the book, this was the section I found most difficult.

Because I had hoped there would be a series of steps available.

A blueprint. 

An answer.

Not just so I could provide value to the reader, but I wanted IT for me.

I felt like I needed it … I realized it was the reason I wrote the book.

I wanted an answer… NEEDED an answer. 

And it was here in this section, I hoped I would find it.

Yet there is no universal answer to something as nuanced and grand as “failure”.

All there ever can be is a guide, and that guide is not toward an answer, but rather a QUESTION; or series of them.

We’ll come to this in a moment because it links to that MEANING of failure.

But first, let’s see where this whole journey ends…

stage seven: ACCEPTANCE

In the book, it says “Today’s torture is tomorrow’s happiness.”

• Failure being the torture.
• Growth being the happiness.

In this seventh and final stage — ACCEPTANCE — you’re able to both see and appreciate this.

In part, due to hindsight. 

It is a bitch, but it does teach us a great deal.

More so, we just know more on the other end of this process.

At any stage in life, we only know what we know.

Each day and week, we edit and rework this; learn new, and debunk the old.

Rinse and repeat, conscious and not, our entire lives.

It’s one of the greatest lessons I took from this entire adventure… to accept this and to appreciate that right now I know what I know and tomorrow that will change. I don’t know how or to what degree, and I never know when lessons will hit. But they will. They WILL come. Sometimes through kind lessons, but also through hard ones; the grueling kind that so many stories in the book involve.

the real meaning of FAILURE

That’s what I learned the real meaning of failure is…

In the beginning, when I first committed to writing The Successful Mistake, I had hoped I would find answers; that learning how failure works would somehow lead me to understand how to “hack” IT and have an answer to IT.

That’s not what happened.

Instead, I learned about the value of asking questions.

The right questions.

This is what failure, mistakes, hardship, and adversity give us.

They help us see, wake up, and gain awareness; if we care to look and take notice.

Most of us don’t, and it’s why we struggle.

It is why we fear failure; are weary of it.

We lose sight of its role, largely because we were never taught what it is.

Although on an innate and foundational level, we know it all too well.

There was a time when you were a baby… a toddler learning to walk and talk.

In time, you achieved both. But you weren’t taught. You observed and DID.

• Took action.
• Took a chance.
• Leaned into failure.

Lots of and lots of mistakes in a bid to bit-by-bit grow.

Until one day, you could walk; could talk.

Nobody taught us that. It WAS within us; an instinct to stare failure down.

We lose that as we get older.

The reason why… that’s for another video.

The point is we do, and although we should not glorify failure or welcome it for the sake of it … we should commit to better understanding it so we do not FEAR it.

That begins by focusing on QUESTIONS!

Failure helps us hone in on the questions we need to ask.

The questions that lead us to the answers we crave.

Whether we know it or not.

Because as we fail, we realize what did work no longer does; what used to serve us no longer does; what we saw was true is no longer as firm and obvious.

We’re forced to open our eyes, let go, delve within, and figure out a “new way”.

Questions … the right questions … they reveal themselves.

From there, we ask them, go in search of their answers, and around and around until there’s no more time left for us to explore.

There’s no end point in that regard … no perfect life free of failure.

It is a part of it and us, just as oxygen is.

Thank you for reading and watching, not just this part but the entire series.

Links to all three (and The Successful Mistake) are below, so catch up if you need to, and bookmark each for future reference — you will need a reminder, no doubt.

And if you’ve enjoyed this, please subscribe to the [no hustle] huddle because there’s a lot more of this and it’s those in the community that access it first.

hi, i’m turndog and I wrote this article … i am a writer, ghostwriter, anti-hustler & a guy on a mission to ensure you too escape the hustle — come be part of the [no hustle] movement

hi, i’m turndog and I wrote this article … i am a writer, ghostwriter, anti-hustler & a guy on a mission to ensure you too escape the hustle — come be part of the [no hustle] movement