How I Overcame Failure

It’s easy to let a mortifying moment keep you playing safe and small, but I want to share with you how to take these events and turn them into powerful learning and growth opportunities.

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How to Deal with Failure

Oh…buckle up…I’ve got a story you're going to get a kick out of. But first I want to ask you a question:

What's your reaction when something humiliating or difficult happens to you?

Do you decide to do everything you can to avoid a situation even remotely close to this in the future? Or do you see it as an invitation to learn, grow and do better the next time a similar thing happens?

I want to tell you about doing my very first keynote.

I was working for Aveda and there was a huge global sales meeting. I was asked to give a 20-minute keynote and so I spent a lot of time crafting, writing, creating my visuals, and rehearsing.

The day of the keynote, I was suuuper nervous. And when I used to get nervous, my chest and neck would get intensely red and blotchy. (I looked like a human Rorschach test 😆 It was so bad that a number of people commented on it afterwards.)

When the keynote was over, I felt pretty good about the job I did - I didn't screw up and I didn't pass out.

The next week when I was in the education director's office he informed me there were a multitude of complaints about my keynote - that it was insensitive and that I was not dressed appropriately.

And it was a complete shock to me.

I thought my message was important and I had bought a brand new outfit for the event. (In hindsight, maybe it was borderline professional-hoochie. Anyway…)

Here I was, still on a high, thinking I did a good job, and I’ve just been blindsided.

When I had a moment to recover from the shock, my immediate thought was, “Okay, ouch. But now I’ve got some valuable information and I'm going to do better next time.”

I didn’t think “Oh my gosh, I just humiliated myself in front of thousands of people. I'm never going to do that again.”

The next time I delivered a keynote I put extra thought into making sure I wasn't being insensitive. I wore something that was more professionally appropriate.

It was a hard lesson, but it made me better.

I never had any formal training on how to be a keynote speaker. I learned through trial and error.

You can't control what happens in your life, but you can control what you learn and what you take away from the situation. Especially the really difficult ones.

Instead of letting challenging humiliating experiences haunt you, use them to make yourself better.

Okay, I just bared one of my most horrible, horrifying moments. What was one of yours and what did you take away from it?

Please let me know I'm not the only one. 😜