Once you begin to take action, you’ll start getting feedback about whether you’re doing the right thing. You’ll get data, advice, help, suggestions, direction, and even criticism that will help you constantly adjust and move forward while continually enhancing your knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and relationships. But asking for feedback is really only the first part of the equation. Once you receive feedback, you have to be willing to respond to it.
What to do when the feedback tells you you’ve failed
When all indicators say you’ve had a “failure experience,” there are a number of things you can do to respond appropriately and keep moving forward:
1. Acknowledge you did the best you could with the awareness, knowledge, and skills you had at the time.
2. Acknowledge that you survived and that you can absolutely cope with any and all of the consequences or results.
3. Write down everything you learned from the experience. Write all of your insights and lessons down in a file in your computer or a journal called Insights and Lessons. Read through this file often. Ask others involved what they learned.
4. Make sure to thank everyone for their feedback and their insights. If someone is hostile in the delivery of their feedback, remember that it is an expression of their level of fear, not your level of incompetence or unlovability. Again, just thank them for their feedback. Explaining, justifying, and blaming are all a waste of everybody’s time. Just take in the feedback, use whatever is applicable and valuable for the future, and discard the rest.
5. Clean up any messes that have been created and deliver any communications that are necessary to complete the experience — including any apologies or regrets that are due. Do not try to hide the failure.
6. Take some time to go back and review your successes. It’s important to remind yourself that you have had many more success than you have had failures. You’ve done many more things right than you’ve done wrong.
7. Regroup. Spend some time with positive loving friends, family, and coworkers who can reaffirm your worth and your contribution.
8. Refocus on your vision. Incorporate the lessons learned, recommit to your original plan, or create a new plan of action, and then get on with it. Stay in the game. Keep moving toward the fulfillment of your dreams. You’re going to make a lot of mistakes along the way. Dust yourself off, get back on your horse, and keep riding.
* Source: The Success Principles by Jack Canfield