58: How To Bounce Back From Failure

Have you ever started a goal or project and you’re all fired up, full of excitement, and ready to go… but slowly you notice your motivation fades, and your passion turns into procrastination?

If you’ve got a few half-finished projects in the back of your closet, you’re in the right place. Today on The Bold Life I’m going to show you how to kick avoidance to the curb so that you can fuel your momentum and keep the ball rolling while working towards your goals. I’ll explain how to keep your motivation high and keep taking action, even on those days when you’d rather sit on the couch and binge Netflix for hours.

What We Can Learn From A Couple of My Hollywood Favourites

Not only do I call Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson one of my favourite actors, but he’s also attracted fans in the wrestling ring and on the football field. From the WWF in 1996, to playing for the Calgary Stampeders football team, to starting to act a few years later in movies like the Fast and Furious series… The Rock has been around the block!

The reason I’m letting you in on my love of The Rock isn’t because I’m recruiting for fan club president, but because he’s a great example of someone who’s had a really long career and kept his motivation high to achieve multiple goals. Even if he’s only been a household name for the past ten years, he’s been acting for over 25 years!

I love hearing the success stories of actors, athletes, and business owners not just because they’re successful now, but because they persevered through tough challenges to eventually achieved their goals. Even when times got tough, they proved their ability sustain motivation until the finish line.

Another favourite of mine – Drew Barrymore.

A former child actor who stared in movies I loved growing up like ET, but she dealt with some tough times as she grew up.

But she persevered, bounced back, and today she is still working on movies and has her own talk show. (If you haven’t seen her show, check it out! She has some great guests, and will keep you laughing). She’s another example of someone who stuck it out for the long game and continues to be one of Hollywood’s favourites.

Leaving Hollywood and Checking Back into Reality

Hollywood tells a lot of tales, but the favourite is the rags to riches story.

The instant stars
The overnight successes
The expedited rise to fame

But rarely is this true. Most actors have been grinding away for years.

Thousands of auditions
Torturous hours of acting classes
The fierce competition
Making ends meet with crappy jobs
Dealing with the 100th “no” from a producer
Memorizing yet another script.

How the heck do they stay motivated to make it on the big screen one day when they’re climbing such a treacherous mountain?

You may have been here before too, with a

New job or career
Fresh idea
Newly discovered hobby
Exciting new project

And I bet you started really motivated. You started out with a full tank, your foot to the floor, and all systems go!

But as time went on, you felt your tank getting a little emptier, roadblocks and distractions came up, and you started to watch your motivation slowly disappear in the rear-view mirror.

Social Media & The False View of Success

Even when we talk about all the hard work that went on behind the scenes, we tend to downplay it. We acknowledge that a person spent ten years getting to where they are now, but we don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the hard years they went through because their current success seems much more interesting.

Here’s the problem – When your brain hears these overnight success stories, you start to hold yourself to those standards. You feel like you should be successful faster.

When something doesn’t work out instantly, or your goal is taking too long to achieve, your brain starts to think “Ugh, this isn’t working, something must be wrong with me so let’s just give up now rather than risk being a failure and making a fool of myself”.

How Many “No’s” Does It Take To Get A “Yes”?

Maybe you haven’t heard of Jamie Kern Lima. She’s the founder of IT Cosmetics – a company that she started from her living room with her husband 15 years ago. More recently, she sold her company to L’Oréal for 1.3 billion dollars.

Although she has an amazing success story, Jamie isn’t shy about telling the stories of how hard she had to work and how many times she failed. She explains it all in her book “Believe it”.

That’s what I admire most about her story is that every single time she got rejected and felt like a failure, she kept going anyway. And she kept going all the way to 1.3 billion dollars! But not without 10 years of getting told “no” over and over again, not without making 1000 sales calls just to get hung up on, and not without feeling let down every time someone didn’t believe in her product as much as she did.

Short Term Versus Long Term – Where Your Brain Is Focused Matters!

Your brain is pretty good at short bursts of motivation, but it’s not as good with the long-term stuff.

That initial passion gives you a burst of motivation and energy but it’s not something you can keep up, so your brain eventually starts to doubt you again. That’s when…

You fall into those traps of judging yourself
You feel like a failure
Your motivation tanks even more

What’s the secret? How do people pick themselves up after being completely abandoned by motivation? How do you re-light the fire to keep your passion burning?

The secret is your habits. Your habits are what keep you going when times get tough!

If your habits include:

Procrastination
Self Doubt
Beating yourself up for messing up

Then you’re way more likely to give up and quit on your dreams.

BUT – It’s possible to develop good mental habits and develop the tools to keep moving towards your dreams.

Two Habits That Can Change Your Motivation Mindset

1. Have a strong “why”.

Think of your “why” as your guiding sense of purpose. The reason you’re doing that hard thing or trying to reach that goal.

In her book, Jamie Kern Lima explains how she would focus on her “why” when it seemed like the whole world was stacked against her. Her “why” was to help women feel beautiful and challenge the cookie cutter ideals in the beauty industry.

Your strongest “why” will be something that’s bigger than yourself – your family, your community, your world. When you have a strong reason for why you want to achieve that goal, it’s easier to keep going even when times are tough.

2. Consistency is key!

While it’s awesome to have those intense bursts of motivation and productivity, what really separates those who are successful is their long game. Those who keep going even when it’s not that fun, and even when it’s really hard.

Jamie Kern Lima probably heard “no” to her business hundreds – heck, thousands! – of times. But she just kept going with baby steps, one foot in front of the other, everyday. And it paid off!

Consistency doesn’t mean that every day is a success. To put it simply, some days just suck.

On those days that suck,

It’s going to be harder to get yourself up and working on the next step towards your goals
Your motivation will be low and seemingly unrecoverable
Willpower will seem like a magical thing that’s never going to happen

Consistency is taking a step anyway. Even if it’s a baby one. Those small steps add up! Each day that you keep working towards your goals your brain will be even more motivated to keep going the next day, and the day after that.

Comparison Can Drain Your Motivation (And Your Self-Esteem!)

When you’re looking at images and stories of everyone else’s success on social media or the news, it’s really hard to measure your own success.

But if you reflect on how far you’ve come personally, it can put things into perspective and encourage you to keep taking those baby steps in the right direction.

You don’t want to be a one hit wonder. You want a lifetime of success and reaching your goals. The solution is that slow and steady wins the race. Don’t beat yourself up for not succeeding fast enough and stop comparing yourself to others. Keep taking action even on the days that you’d rather hide under your bed.

Bonus point: The Power Of Failure

Sometimes rejection is a good thing!

If The Rock had stayed playing football he never would have been able to make people laugh with his movies.

If Jamie Kern Lima would have listened and believed all the “no’s” she got about her company when she first started, she wouldn’t have been able to see it grow into the success it is today.

As hard as failure is to face, keep in mind that “no” might lead to other – dare I say better – opportunities down the road. But if you let your momentum go and you quit, then you’ll never get to know for sure.

Show Highlights

[01:10] Our brains aren’t wired to wait for success.

[03:07] Why I love reading about successful people.

[03:57] The truth about how most successful actors achieved their success.

[05:11] Jaimie Lima and how she created a successful cosmetic company.

[09:16] Why habits keep you going when times get tough.

[11:15] Consistency is key to keep you going when you’ve lost motivation.

[13:43] How to use reflection to keep perspective on how far you’ve come in your business.

[15:06] Failure and why it can be a good event in your life.

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