How do you handle faliure?

Question

What do you do after failing and how do you move on?

Surender Singh · Accepted Answer

Rejection, failure is difficult to process, but they are not forever. I've been rejected a tonne and I've had more failures than I can recall.

The way i look at it is this - while building a company (or anything for that matter), it is a given that there will be ups and downs - wins and failures. 
I imagine the 'feeling' of 'win' or 'failure' to be cars driving on a highway and i imagine myself sitting on a bench (outside the highway) just looking at the cars go by. I try not to get into any of these cars. Because then you are driving away with one feeling, not realizing that there are other cars and they keep coming and going.

I guess what I am trying to say is, don't get inside the car (or try not to be inside the car for too long), come back to your bench, and just observe those cars go by.

Not sure if all my mumbo-jumbo made sense. :D

David J. Kim · Answer

@surender_singh I believe what you're saying is similar to almost all mindfulness teachers/practitioners out there.

Your thoughts/emotions (especially the ones regarding failure) will come and go, like cars passing by. It's important not to hop on them and let them rule you.

And in a way, these heavy emotions are less like normal cars and more like big trucks. But you still need to stay on the bench.

Nurlan Nurmanov · Answer

When I get negative news, I try to take a long walk. During the walk, I try to think about positive things. It takes time and my advice is not to make any decisions immediately. Give it some time.

Lucian Apostol · Answer

Entrepreneurship or startup world is full of failures. Nothing works for the first time. Most successful products I have right now are the ones that took the most rejections.

Brutal negative feedback is hard to cope with, but it is the kind of feedback that helps you to improve the product. You can get demotivated by a rejection because you tend to think that you are not good enough for this, or you can get motivated to make things better.

I have launched few products that got instant praise from the community. Those were the ones that had the most abrupt failure, and I still dont know why it happened. They got good feedback, why they went wrong ? Good feedback was good for morale, but made me think that the product was perfect, which was false. Not having the opportunity to improve the product led to failure.

At the end of the day, the success of a product consist in how many people are using it, or how many people are willing to pay for it.

If yo have tried something and it didnt work, keep going, try something else, pivot, etc. It takes many tries to get good results.

The most criticized products are the ones that I had success with. People were saying that no one will use that product because of this, no one will spend money on it. I used this feedback and I tried to improve the product to overcome the first impression. This kind of feedback made me to improve the pitch and the copy to be able to drive sales.

Gleb Braverman · Answer

I try not to think about the past and focus on what I can do now, basically manage what I can control.

Also, try to stick with a routine and make your life predictable for a short period of time - it will help you clear your mind.

How do you handle faliure?

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