How do you cope with failure?
It's so common for products, projects, or ideas to not work out. I speak to builders every day who've decided to sunset their products.
How do you decide when is a good time to walk away?
How do you process the whole journey emotionally/mentally?
I know failing can be hard for a lot of people. It's isolating building and even worse when things don't work out.
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From my experience I cope with failure as a learning mechanism to evolve mentally and physically as the saying "What doesn't kill you make you stronger".
So, I consider failure is in the core part of the success process without failure you won't know what success is, without failure you won't be able to avoid it in the future, without failure you won't be able to accumulate your knowledge and wisdom, consider failure as a mentor and a spot light that illuminate the road for you into the right direction.
Embrace failure as an essential part of life to make us better and stronger and if you are tired just take a short break to take out the steam and reorganizing your thoughts and feeling, then start again with a new weapon equipped, that weapon called "The Experience from failure to become a better you".
It is an iterative cycle of life, so embrace it and accept it as part of our nature as humans and life, just remember it is just a temporarily roadblock to test you and to make you adapt and learn quickly, just love it because it is the only feature among few in life that makes us the better version of our previous self and give it a big thank you for making us better.
And you can apply the same concept on "Pain" and "Fear" as a catalyst and a compass.
I hope to be better after reading this :)
That's incredible. So true to realise that failure and success are both natural outcomes.
Every situation is unique.
No one have your context or understanding of your situation better than you.
Remember not to outsource your decisions. You have to own your decisions. You have to own you own life.
That being said, I would give up on something when I don't fill it is going to work anymore. When your money is gone and no one else cares.
It also depends on how big is your project. If it is just a side project with no consequence than fine, give up if you are bored. If it is a big startup idea than you have to be willing to put at least a year to start.
I agree, but even with larger projects it's better walking away from something that doesn't serve you than keep going at with no success.
Sure, I would avoid walking away just because it is hard. I've seen people wander from ideia do idea in search for the next shinning thing only to give up again. It's not good for you.
Hi, Mei 👋
The decision of when to walk away is very personal and depends on many factors. Some people quit with the first struggle, and others push through the worst.
I sunset my first venture after I failed, again and again, trying to figure out a sustainable business model. This was the point when I could see only two paths to continue but none of them aligned with what I was willing to do at that moment, so I quit.
About the journey - it is an emotional rollercoaster. You need to deal not only with failure but also rejection, risk, finances, your own self-esteem, lack of time ... and the list goes on. It is very challenging to handle all of this. Building things from scratch requires a lot of inner strength and resistance. However, in the process, founders often forget to take proper care of themselves.
So true, the emotional rollercoaster is so much more challenging that the actual process and it is important to take care of yourself through it all.
I guess it depends on how you define a failure. I tend to get burnt out on grinding a single project and divert my attention to a new, shiny project.
This is a double-edged sword, though because I struggle to ship.
I meant having to close shop or discontinue a product but your take on this is interesting as burning out because you don't find something fun anymore is sort of like failing at it.
I have no advice really, feels like its mostly failures. Just hoping for a win someday and itl be all worth it
You've gotta keep going. It's all about making slow consistent progress.
My projects are always work in progress. So I never really fail or succeed.