155 Reframing Failure: Turning Setbacks into Opportunities

Ever feel like you're stuck in a race towards perfection, only to find it's an impossible finish line? Are you terrified of failure, thinking it's a sign of weakness rather than a stepping stone? Well, you're not alone, and we're here to change that mindset.

In this enlightening discussion, we reveal the three forms perfectionism can take.  And yes, we discuss our battles with perfectionism, unveiling its impact on our sense of self-worth, and how we've learned to find grace in our own imperfections.

Finally, we debunk the myth that perfectionism is a sign of strength. Instead, we champion the growth mindset, acknowledging that it’s through our mistakes and setbacks that we truly learn and grow.

We share our stories of transformation, and how we learned to embrace our failures and use them as a springboard for growth. We've gone through this journey, and we're here to guide you through yours. So let’s get started, let's learn to embrace our shortcomings and celebrate our growth.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn
1) How perfectionism contributes to the fear of failure,
2) The root causes of perfectionism and the fear of failure; and
3) What we can do to overcome perfectionism and embrace failure

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Transcript

Nola Boea: 0:00

Whether it's at work, in our relationships or learning a new technology skill or whatever. It's fair to say that the vast majority of us would rather avoid failure, which may be why those well-known mantras often used by business leaders, entrepreneurs and coaches, such as fail fast, fail often and failure is good. It lets us learn from our mistakes, feel more like platitudes than meaningful truths, and that's in part because there's often a disconnect between what we say and what we do. Case in point studies show that the vast majority of C-suite executives, business owners and employees actually live by the adage that failure is not an option. But consider this what if the rewards of leaning into our failures outweighed the downsides? What if it led to our longevity, personal and professional growth and life satisfaction? Then would you be willing to learn how to embrace failure and possibly even thrive on it? Stick around, friend, as we explore why avoiding failure may be holding you back from success and the steps you can take to learn how to embrace it.

Lori Vajda: 1:10

Welcome to Sticky Brand Lab, where we bridge the gap between knowledge and action by providing you with helpful information, tips and tools from entrepreneurs and other experts so you can quickly and easily jump start your side business. We're your hosts. I'm Lori Vajda, and this is my Nola, Boea. Hi Nola, hey Lori. So, Nola, given today's topic, do you embrace failure or do you find it difficult? Let's be honest here Most adults don't like the feeling of failure, so maybe a better way to frame that question is how do you respond when something doesn't go as planned or you don't get the outcome that you were hoping for?

Nola Boea: 1:51

Well, it depends. I want to say that, for the most part, I'm probably okay and maybe break myself a little bit or might feel a little embarrassed. There are times, though, that, if I've really put my all into something, just like with total focus and zen abandonment if there is such thing and then it fails, I will just like ball.

Lori Vajda: 2:14

Oh, you really get emotionally connected to something.

Nola Boea: 2:18

I don't do it very often. In fact, I don't do it very often for that reason, because I guess there is something about detachment You're not being attached to the outcome. I won't say I'm not attached to the outcome, but I have learned to try not to be so well. No, I haven't. There are some things where I'm just emotionally attached to what I'm doing and I just try so hard, and especially if I've struggled really hard to get it done. And then let me just say it's been many, many years since I've done something like that, and actually bald, but it has happened. For the most part I am able to grant myself some grace.

Lori Vajda: 2:52

I think your experience of some things are just more personal to us or maybe more aligned with how we're connected to it. Like I take a lot of pride in my work and when something totally doesn't go the way the client intended and I thought I was on the right page, I do take that far more personally than I should, so I can really understand where you're coming from. As a matter of fact, as you're talking about it, I'm thinking while I may not have cried, I have definitely come close to it because maybe there's a little bit of shame to it, it could be.

Nola Boea: 3:27

I think you nailed it when you said pride, and I think especially we're copywriters. So, unless you have a really super thick skin every now and then, if you really do take pride in what you're doing, whatever you're writing, if you take it personally, maybe it's a subject matter, like with me that I've been known to do that on occasion it's like I love this subject matter, I'm just going to throw myself into it and then they rip it apart and it's like but so maybe it's an occupational hazard. That might be true. Generally speaking, though, I think most adults will find embracing failure hard, and Brene Brown has a great quote about this. She said when perfectionism is driving us, shame is riding shotgun and fear is that annoying backseat driver.

Lori Vajda: 4:15

I can so relate. First of all, I love Brene Brown, her books. I listened to them and she reads her books. So when I say she really helped me, I feel like her voice was literally in my ear and it really did have an impact on me. And she's right about that whole shame kind of riding shotgun. It is that underlying feeling that happens when you put pride into your work. This is your career, you've worked hard, you went to school or you put the years and the dedication into it. There's a lot of truth to what she said.

Nola Boea: 4:50

You're right. I love this quote and even though it mentions perfectionism, I think as adults, we all have that desire to carry out our tasks correctly. You talked about professional pride. Yeah, we want to stay away from errors, we want to avoid embarrassing ourselves, and these are all behaviors and traits that could fall into the general heading of aiming for perfection, and it's totally something I can relate to.

Lori Vajda: 5:13

I totally agree with you. In fact and this is my own confession I was interested in this topic because I wanted to explore it, because I'm having a challenge, I keep putting something off and I wanted to understand why this is happening and where the cause is. But before I share my story, I want to let you listen, or know that we're really covering this topic in three points. We're looking at how perfectionism, or even the idea of perfectionism, contributes to our fear of failure, the root causes of perfectionism, and how do you overcome or move past it so that you can embrace failure, cool. So, with that being said, here's my confession that I'm putting out there because, as another semi quote of Brene Brown, if you share your story, you own your narrative. So I'm going to own it. You go, girl, thank you.

Lori Vajda: 6:12

So basically, I, as I mentioned, have been working on something and I've been procrastinating, and the honest truth is I've procrastinated a little more than a year. I take steps, I move forward. It doesn't turn out the way that I envision it, it doesn't come natural, it doesn't come easy. I put it aside, I do more research, I start to work on it, I do some editing. I've even sought out mentoring, thinking, if I got a clear understanding, and all of that hasn't gotten me any farther along in the process.

Lori Vajda: 6:44

The longer I've put it off, the harder it has been to get back in and embrace it, because there's a disconnect between my heart and my head. My head has this logical approach, but my emotions keep welling up and all I can now see is I've procrastinated, I have failed and I'm not getting closer to the end result. So I wanted to explore it and I thought, if I'm suffering from this, there are probably other people out there, other listeners, people who have thought about starting a side business, taking their skills, maybe doing coaching or consulting or trainings and they're faced with I've never done it before. What do I need to do? What do I need to learn? And the more they learn, the easier it is to get absorbed in the learning and not the doing. So I thought maybe this would ring a bell for some of our listeners as well, and it would also help me understand what's really going on.

Nola Boea: 7:44

So you get to be our guinea pig as we walk through this.

Lori Vajda: 7:48

Yes, pretty much. Yeah, you're gonna poke holes and challenge me and I'm going to explore what's going on. Yeah, Cool.

Nola Boea: 7:56

Well, let me ask you this first question, Laurie. So you've been doing a lot of research and you do more research. Do you think that doing that incessant research is a behavior that is related to perfectionism?

Lori Vajda: 8:11

I think that's a great question, especially because I don't consider myself a type A personality. If you asked me if I considered myself a perfectionist, I would say no. But then I thought maybe I don't really understand what perfectionism is because, like I said, I want this task to be done correctly, I want to do it right the first time, and so I keep spending a lot of time in it. So it drove me to look at various perspectives that have been studied on perfectionism, and one of them that I came up with was from two psychologists, paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett, I believe, and they described three forms of perfectionism. The first one is self oriented. This is when someone demands perfection from themselves. Number two is other oriented, and that's when somebody demands perfection from other people, so not themselves, but others. And then there's the socially prescribed perfectionist, and that's when someone feels pressure from other people out there. Whether it's real or not, they feel the pressure to be perfect themselves.

Nola Boea: 9:18

Do any of those definitions resonate with you?

Lori Vajda: 9:22

Yeah, so I really immediately identified, at least in this situation, with the self oriented perfectionism, in part because the assignment that I've been procrastinating on is writing email funnels for a business venture that you and I have been working on. It's about cold emails, warm emails, getting people to respond. It's sales copy and that's my Achilles heel. The ability to sell is where I get very panicky. I think I should do it perfectly. It doesn't come naturally to me, although when I'm talking about something that I love, I can naturally get into it, but I have, I don't think of selling in quite the same way. So my desire to get the message perfect to attract our target audience it's really giving me this idea. That self oriented, that expectation I have for myself is the one that resonated with me.

Nola Boea: 10:25

Can you relate to it? It does. You and I are both really capable women. Right, I think we both have a level of perfectionism.

Lori Vajda: 10:33

A healthy sense is what I would have said. You're right, we want to do a good job. Well, we'll see about that.

Nola Boea: 10:42

But my point is, when you have anxiety, when it gets to the point where you're anxious about doing it right, that can definitely put a damper on progress. I know it does for me, at least with certain projects. Okay, and I can definitely relate to the definitions of perfectionism given by these two psychologists, which one of those resonated with you the strongest.

Lori Vajda: 11:05

It has to be only one, no. But let's start with one.

Nola Boea: 11:10

Okay, so I do relate to the self perfectionism because I do hold myself to these ultra professional standards which I also impose on others, which, yes, yes, listener. Maybe that's the other part of it.

Lori Vajda: 11:26

Sometimes I'll write out a sentence and Nola will come back and she will make sure that it is grammatically correct and I will think isn't the essence there.

Nola Boea: 11:35

So I can relate so for me they go hand in hand. I can also relate to being praised as a kid for getting things just perfect, so I ended up kind of feeling this pressure to continue to meet those expectations. I think it's just this natural desire to keep that praise coming. I'm sure some kind of psychologist could really go much deeper with that, but I would say that probably falls under socially prescribed perfectionism right, oh my God.

Lori Vajda: 12:07

So like you have all three I was feeling I did say don't make me pick one, you did you did so.

Nola Boea: 12:14

I'd like to share another definition, though, of perfectionism. This one's by Dr. He's the author of the book the Pursuit of Perfect. He says perfectionism's like this First, it's about the rejection of painful emotions, in other words, it's the desire to experience positive emotions like a constant high. The second is it's a rejection of failure, not accepting that life actually has ups and downs. And the third is the rejection of success, meaning you're putting success out of reach. Here it means that nothing's good enough, so every success is immediately dismissed. It's automatically poo-pooed because it's just not perfect or because something more or better can be attained. So I thought those were pretty interesting as well.

Lori Vajda: 13:03

Yeah, to me what's really interesting about them is that when we think of perfection, we think of being perfect, yet he focuses on what you're rejecting, which seems counterintuitive, although what you're saying leads me to think about myself procrastination, so I'm rejecting and that's the procrastination. But I also think about. You often hear kids that are really brilliant, who are underachievers, and I wonder if that's kind of a similar bent to that. I don't know if it applies. It would be great to interview them. The psychologist who came up with the rejection kind of model. I definitely think it's interesting.

Nola Boea: 13:45

Well, I did have to pause and wrap my brain around those definitions, because in the end, what he's saying is chasing the positive means rejecting the negative, which in itself can be a negative, right, yeah, and confusing too, yeah, exactly. So to add to this perfection definition list, and recognizing that there really is no one right definition, here's a third one. In this definition, psychologists refer to adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism. So adaptive perfectionism is when you strive for higher and higher standards, and it's really more about working hard and making sure things are done well, just competing with yourself.

Lori Vajda: 14:30

Oh, yeah, I've got a great example of that. During COVID I was not able to go out golfing and part of that was I was also recovering from cancer. It had been like almost three and a half years since I had held a golf club maybe four years and I had the opportunity over the summer to go out and golf for the very first time and we played 18 holes and I said the first nine were all practice, like I hadn't swung at all. This was all about getting a feel, getting familiar with my clubs, everything. The second nine I had actually been able to hit the ball. I could see some improvement. So I practiced for nine holes and then I played for nine holes, but the second time we went out to golf that nine holes was an improvement.

Lori Vajda: 15:21

So for me golf is. I know people have mixed feelings about it, but for me I'm always competing against myself. Am I hitting it farther? Am I hitting it more accurately? I'm still a novice in the game itself, but I really like it because it's all about me getting a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better.

Nola Boea: 15:41

I think that's a great example and it's healthy attitude, as long as you're not berating yourself for screwing up and knowing that, okay, this is practice. Now compare that to maladaptive perfectionism. That's when you have unrealistic expectations of success. People like this have to be the best at everything, and that's why having this kind of maladaptive perfectionism can lead to unrealistic expectations and painful emotions and with this, the fear of failure can become so emotionally debilitating that it leads to other unhealthy thinking and behavior. For example, think about the student who will do whatever it takes to get top scores, or, on the flip side if I can't be the best student, then why bother trying and having pitiful grades?

Lori Vajda: 16:30

It reminds me of a college professor that I really loved in psychology and I went back to visit him after I had graduated and he was talking about how the student body had really changed and he gave an example of having a student who had never had a B at all. And she came in and she just was mounting this argument of why her grade should not be a B, it should be an A. She even had her parents call the professor At that time. I asked him what did you do? And he said I told her, and I told her parents. You can thank me later. Awesome, he was nice and I'm not changing the grade. She didn't earn it, she didn't deserve it. She got her B. This is how she's going to learn how to accept that not everything is going to be an A. Yeah, you can thank me for teaching this to her at this time in her life so she doesn't have to deal with it painfully later in life. We both cracked up about it, but he was absolutely right.

Nola Boea: 17:31

That actually makes sense. I can kind of relate to this whole maladaptive perfectionism thing in that. Yeah, so you can add that to my list of perfectionist malfunctions. And this one it just made me think back to when I was in junior high. So I was given a clarinet by my dad and I liked the clarinet and the saxophone and I got private lessons. So by the time I was in junior high band I was the best in the wind section. What's a wind section? That's not like a gas section, is it? Well, it depends on what they had for lunch, but it's the clarinet, saxophone, oboe, things like that.

Nola Boea: 18:10

Oh, so I was the first chair clarinet player. I was played in the jazz band as, I guess, an eighth grader going into the high school, ninth grade. The band director would come from the high school, which happened to be next door, small town, and you had to try out for band in high school and based on your tryouts you would know whether you got into beginning band, intermediate band or concert band. Typically, freshmen got into beginning intermediate. I was probably the only freshman that got into concert band straight from junior high school and I thought that was great. I was the best, I was the winner until I showed up and I was not the first chair.

Nola Boea: 18:49

I had to walk all the way past all these people and sit in the very last chair and you know what? It was no longer gratifying. I no longer had that sense of I'm the best and I will always be the best, and it's really sad. I lost all motivation to be in the band and I kind of quit.

Lori Vajda: 19:08

Oh well, your story is sad. On the other hand, I never knew this about you so. I didn't know that you could play multiple instruments. I am way impressed.

Nola Boea: 19:18

Oh well, I played those after I quit piano.

Lori Vajda: 19:25

You could be your own band.

Nola Boea: 19:28

That would be really sad. Well, continuing on that kind of maladaptive perfectionism. It means that you're never really satisfied with your accomplishments and you quickly discard anything that's not absolutely flawless, and people with this may experience fear, failure or anxiety or unhappiness. I do have another example. Okay, you had talked about the student who made their parents call. I did not go to that extreme, however. It might have been a freshman, maybe sophomore, in university and I had a double major in accounting and economics, carrying a 4.0, and had this life plan to get a job at a big four accounting firm and get into their Japan office Cause I was also taking Japanese language.

Lori Vajda: 20:21

I didn't know that either.

Nola Boea: 20:23

Wow, and I had this all planned out because these accounting firms people scramble to get into them. They will only take the cream of the crop. I even got a scholarship for a little bit and then I got my first. B was a difficult course and okay, I earned the B and I was absolutely devastated, Not just because I expected an A, but I was devastated because this one B keeps me from qualifying for my dream job. Now retrospect, I'm really glad I did not become an accountant.

Lori Vajda: 20:56

Good point. Sometimes not being perfect takes you down a different path. But I can relate to your grade story because I had left college and when I returned to college I had a toddler and I was working to get my grades. It really meant a lot to me. I wanted the honors badge. So I worked really, really hard to prove to myself that my coming back was a good decision. And not only was it a good decision, but I was smart. I hadn't always felt that way, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do that Well. I had been doing really well actually, and I was making the honor roll deans list. It was great. But then I got pregnant a second time and during that period it was the semester before graduation, before we finished, and I thought I'm going to take extra classes because I wanted the second semester to be easier, since I would be graduating in August and I would be delivering in September. So I wanted to load up front so that I could have an easier time.

Lori Vajda: 22:01

The GPA I forget exactly what you needed to have in order to get honors. I think it was something like you needed a 3.87, something like that. And that semester that I had front loaded. I had gotten a B. That semester, I think I had a. It was like a 3.85. That's good, yes, however, and the final semester had a 4.0. But what they did is they took your GPA from the semester before you graduate and if you met the number, you got honors. If you didn't, you didn't receive honors. So I had like a 3.85. You needed a 3.87. So I didn't get honors. And on top of that, the last semester, I had a 4.0. But it didn't matter. I didn't qualify and I took it. Personally, I was devastated because it had a psychological impact for me.

Nola Boea: 22:57

Because you really did earn it and you didn't get it and it was nothing you could control that was sad, I know. So you say it had an impact on you. In what way?

Lori Vajda: 23:06

Well, I think because I had worked so hard. To me there was a connection between my self-worth and, at that time, the GPA.

Nola Boea: 23:16

Oh yeah.

Lori Vajda: 23:17

Later it would be my self-worth and my evaluations in my job. How well did I perform? I just continued to bring other people's opinion into the mix and that's how I saw myself and that's where I was striving. So I think I carry that with me. I mean, I have other experiences from that in the workplace that I think contribute to a little bit of what you're talking about here.

Nola Boea: 23:47

That makes complete sense. So, listener, if you are wondering if you might be a maladaptive perfectionist, maybe you can kind of relate to one of our stories. I'm just going to give you a list of 10 actions and behaviors that might give you an indication that you might be a maladaptive perfectionist. So, number one you have high, unrealistic goals. Number two you give up on tasks if you feel that you can't be the best or you can't be the winner. Number three you view mistakes as failures and conceal them from others. Number four use an excessive amount of time planning or redoing work to make it perfect Sound familiar.

Nola Boea: 24:29

Number five you don't like to take risks unless you're sure a successful outcome is guaranteed. Number six you are overly concerned with what other people think about you and believe that if your flaws are exposed you will be rejected. Number seven you don't handle criticism or feedback very well. Number eight you apply unrealistic standards to your colleagues and you're overly critical of their work. Number nine if things don't go according to plan, you can feel stressed and anxious. And number 10, you find it difficult to delegate tasks to others. Can you see yourself in any of these activities? Omg.

Lori Vajda: 25:16

Let me just say that when I had looked at that list I thought, oh, there's a few and that's not a problem. But as we've been having this discussion and I've shared some personal stories, I realized that a lot more on that list I can relate to and at the same time I have the adaptive. You know, I gave my golf story. So it makes me wonder if in some parts of your life you can have adaptive perfectionism and in maybe other areas you might be more maladaptive. And I think for myself, in almost every area I would say I have an adaptive attitude. But when it comes to work, which is where my pride is, I think I might be maladaptive. What about you? Do any of these resonate with you?

Nola Boea: 26:07

I think you have a good point because I think in a lot of aspects I have a healthy attitude. But when I do think about my professional life maybe it's not just my professional life I would say I am kind of pricked when I read eight, nine and even 10. So I have gotten a lot better. So the stories I told you were in the past and I really have matured a lot since then. But I still think number eight I do expect a level of professionalism from my colleagues and I do feel anxious if things don't go according to plan Number 10, I actually also find it difficult to delegate tasks to others, especially colleagues, because they're not going to do it as good as I am going to do it. And if they do do it, I have to put my stamp on it.

Lori Vajda: 26:55

But you know what? I think you've hit a really important part. I mean, there's a lot in that list that I can relate to. I wish I couldn't relate to, but I can and I think it's about when you recognize that. Here's where some of my deficiencies are. What do you do? How do you understand it? Where does that come from, right? So one of the things when I was again looking at the research, I was thinking all right, how do you change your outlook on this? And that led me down a rabbit hole that looked at the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.

Lori Vajda: 27:33

I think we often think of growth mindset, so I would describe myself as a lifelong learner definitely a growth mindset, but clearly there are behaviors that we do that we may not even be aware of. That actually put us into the fixed mindset. And let me give you some examples. You will often hear older adults, mature adults, talk about asking their child or their grandchild to teach them, or not even to teach them, the technology or a certain app They'll assign it to them to do because they don't want to learn it, and that kind of is really aligns with a fixed mindset. Think about people who typically will do the easier work and give the harder work to someone else, so they're not challenging themselves. They might tell themselves that that person can do it quicker or that person is better at it, but really they're not developing the muscle to do it better, to get better at it, to learn. So here's kind of a table of a growth mindset and we're going to compare that to a fixed mindset.

Lori Vajda: 28:46

In a growth mindset you really embrace learning and see mistakes as an opportunity to learn from them. In a fixed mindset you're really doing almost everything you can to avoid making a mistake or other people seeing that you've made a mistake. In a growth mindset you adapt an attitude. Learning is a process and I'm not going to give up until I at least understand it to do it well enough, whereas in a fixed mindset you're willing to delegate it or give up before you even start because you're overwhelmed at learning and you're overwhelmed at the thought that somebody else who's teaching you knows how to do it better than you are and you've reached this age or this level in your career and you don't want to give up, looking like the subject matter expert. In a growth mindset you really question is this my best work and you see it as an opportunity to do reedits or revisions. And in the fixed mindset, you say this is good enough and you're willing to leave it as it is. In a fixed mindset you think of I know best, I'm the expert, whereas in a growth mindset, feedback is valuable. Every little bit of information can help you do it a little bit better, can take you a little bit farther. In a fixed mindset, you look at it as I'll never be good at that or I'm not smart at that skill set, so why should I even try? And in a growth mindset, you really understand and embrace that practice leads to improvement. So if you're thinking to yourself, does stepping out of my comfort zone excite me or does it make me fearful? It'll let you know.

Lori Vajda: 30:39

Growth mindset, fixed mindset, does the thought of making a mistake bring up some anxiety within you? That's probably more related to a fixed mindset. If you're thinking to yourself, I'm not good at technology, I'm not good at math, then you're probably leaning towards a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. Now, from my perspective, I think that this whole thing that sent me down, wanting to explore what was happening, is again work related, and I find that much to my embarrassment, here I am leaning towards the fixed mindset, and it's an uncomfortable feeling, so much so that I want to be like the rest of my life where I embrace the mistakes. If I make a recipe and it fails, we either throw it out, we eat it as is around the good parts and leave the bad parts, and I just know that next time I'll improve it, because now I know what to do different. But when it comes to work, I think I have a lot of growing to do.

Nola Boea: 31:45

Well, recognizing you have the problem is the first step.

Lori Vajda: 31:48

Yeah, that's what they say.

Nola Boea: 31:51

Actually, I'm really proud of you to even admit that, and for that I think you might actually have a little growth mindset there.

Lori Vajda: 31:59

Aw, yay, I'm leaning, I'm growing.

Nola Boea: 32:04

You mentioned this, that this can happen when you have past experiences that really affect your psyche, for lack of a better word.

Nola Boea: 32:12

Especially work related, which makes complete sense that this is now coming out in your work in general, for our listeners and other aspects of life. It's these kinds of seeds, whether we're talking about growth, mindset, fixed man set, adaptive, maladaptive, perfectionism or failure. Those are seeds that get planted from past experiences, whether adult, young adult or early childhood, and it usually happens without us ever being aware of it. There are ways to at least do some personal exploration to try to uncover on earth what those seeds or those roots might have been. Why don't we use your situation as example? I'm going to just list a few things that you might do to do that on our thing. So the first thing is to look for the source. What experience, what people might have done this? Has there been a judgment or a major disapproval? If you maybe identify that source, now think about how does that play out.

Nola Boea: 33:20

This experience happened. So what emotional responses came from that and still come from that? Is it anger? Do you freeze? Do you get defensive? And then the other thing to ask yourself is where does that emotion manifest in the body? So when you're in that situation or dealing with these choices, do you feel it in your stomach? Do you get that nod in your gut, do you feel short of breath? How does that manifest?

Lori Vajda: 33:50

So the fact that we looked at this and I recognized that it was work related is where my maladaptive perfectionism really shines. You're talking about this and we shared some examples from school and I think that the seeds were planted in early childhood. I was not a good student, I didn't have good study habits, I didn't come from an environment that supported that. I wasn't a lot of reading. Matter of fact, they thought that I had a reading difficulty, so they put me in a summer school program. It turned out I didn't have a reading challenge, I just wasn't reading, and so that whole mindset around not being a good learner planted a seed.

Lori Vajda: 34:37

And then in college I had a really rough start, so rough that I was asked to reconsider my priorities and when I came back I was very motivated.

Lori Vajda: 34:48

I was internally motivated, not externally motivated. So that intrinsic motivation I really channeled and the feedback that I got for being a good student when I returned really continued to incentivize me to get better and better and better, which is my story around the GPA and why those honors were so important. Well, later, I think, that whole thing around education just switched over to my field, my career, and I moved from getting feedback from professors to feedback from colleagues and from bosses, and I think that when I am faced with doing something that is in my wheelhouse, I put a lot of pressure on myself to deliver the best that I can deliver, whether it's to a client or to myself, and with a client, I think this isn't in their wheelhouse. So doing the best that I can do in delivering something I'm proud of they're very happy with, but I'm not satisfied when I'm doing it for myself. So I think it's rooted there.

Nola Boea: 36:02

That is fascinating. Do you feel emotions and does that manifest in your body? It?

Lori Vajda: 36:10

does I get stomach pains? I probably don't do deep breathing during that stress. In that case, I've had to learn how to develop a deep breathing practice, and meditation has really helped with that. Otherwise, I do very shallow breathing. I know that I have muscle tension in my upper shoulders, but I also have it through my back. So I think when I'm really focused on something, my body does not relax into it. It gets very stiff, and I think those muscle tensions happen a lot there as well. And then I have an inner voice that is very critical, so something that doesn't look right. Or if somebody points out my error, instead of just saying, hey, thanks for pointing that out, I look at it as oh, I should have known better, oh, I should have caught that, oh, I should have. And so I have a lot of shoulds, that my inner critic comes out a lot and hangs around a lot.

Nola Boea: 37:07

I'm reminded of one of our podcast guest quote. I'm not sure it's original, but she said it recently. Our guest Nikki Oden shoulding on yourself.

Lori Vajda: 37:17

Yes, now that I've put it out there, I mean, in some respects this has been an eye-opening process. Going through this, saying it out loud, owning my narrative, really gives me an opportunity to see that there are things that I can do. Now, I wanna say, to embrace failure but really To reframe it. That is one of our first suggestions, which is Reframe the experience rather than see it is something you've said or done as a failure. Think of it as an exercise or stepping stone or a lesson learned, because if you break it down and think about is, when you're building something, it comes with directions. You have step one, step two, step three. You can't just get to the end, you have to build it.

Lori Vajda: 38:07

If I slow things down and see this as a lesson, a small step forward, and that I'm just learning and as I move, I can then revamp. There's a wonderful book called the creative act and in there what he says is that you can take a step forward, but if you find your stuck at the next step, go on to the following step and keep going, because what ends up happening is you're filling in like the missing blanks. Right, you're moving With the easier stuff for the stuff that comes more natural to you and that can help inform the place that you're stuck, which tends to be not only important but helpful. The next thing that you wanna do is, when you make a mistake, look at it and ask yourself, well, what did I learn? And write that down. That becomes really important. So not only Did you reframe it as I'm learning and taking steps to move forward, but I can now evaluate that I learned something from the mistake that I made.

Lori Vajda: 39:13

And by writing it down, you're keeping a record of that. That can accelerate the process right, because you catch the mistake and then you recognize what you've learned from it. And so now, when you continue on, your less likely to make that same mistake again. And the final technique that you wanna do is for those successes, acknowledge it and celebrate it. We often wait until the very end, until something is complete, to reward ourselves, but if we think about it as one step forward, one step forward, one step forward, those are individual acknowledgements and individual celebrations. You can give yourself a very big celebration at the end, but give yourself a little reward as you're going through each step.

Nola Boea: 39:59

I love that. I have a suggestion. That is what I've called the experiment. So sounds intriguing. Yeah, what you do is when you're faced with this new task or goal, about to do something. Instead of taking it so seriously, just consider it an experiment. You're playing in a sandbox. Don't think of it as this thing that you absolutely have to do, right, the first time. You're going to see this as a work in progress and you know that the more you do it, the better you get. But you're not so attached to it being absolutely perfect, because you know when it's an experiment, when you're just playing, you can't predict the outcome. You know that you're gonna be learning, you'll be improving, but there is really no good or bad. There's no right or wrong. Now you do have to finish the goal. You do want to do your best, but it does not have to be so Ridgidly perfect that you beat yourself up. Just think of it as a creative experiment. You get to play and enjoy the learning process.

Lori Vajda: 41:03

You know what this reminds me of? Two things. The first one is when I was in college and we had to do experiments. Literally, we had to do surveys and studies, so it was all around statistics and the idea in there is you start with a hypothesis, you're not attached to the outcome, you don't know yet what's going to happen. You're doing experiments to see what the result is. An often you learn something from it, which is where people come up with their theories, because they tested it out. They weren't attached to the outcome, but they reported With a detachment that they own the experiment, but they didn't own the outcome. Interesting, they were discovering it. That was not the first one. The second thing that came to mind was my extended family. I have aunts that are very creative, very talented cousins, artistic. So I saw myself is not having any of that talent.

Lori Vajda: 42:00

Well, as an adult, a community center was offering Get familiar with the arts, and so you enrolled in six little mini classes and each one of them taught you something different. I remember going into learning with pencils. I was learning shading, painting, ceramic. Here's what I didn't know. I assumed that you just naturally had the talent, but when I went into the class, the instructors broke things down into smaller steps and gave us the perspective to build off our art piece. I was so proud of what I was able to do once they showed us how to do it that all I kept thinking as why didn't I do this when I was in high school or college? There was nothing to be afraid of. They broke it down, I did it. They broke the next step down, I did it, and when I was done, I took pictures. I carry them in my phone and this is probably 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more, because I'm so proud of what it looks like.

Lori Vajda: 43:08

Well, our third suggestion is a four step process. The first is to embrace your past. You can't change it, but you can think about it differently. So if you had a teacher or a parent or relative that kind of planted that seat of doubt and insecurity in you, now that you're an adult you can step back and really see that their intention was to help you. Their method was misguided. In other words, it really isn't you, it's them. I like that.

Lori Vajda: 43:39

This next step in that is you really want to flip the script? Are you familiar with the Yale professor, laura Santos? I'm not. Well, she is known for having one of the most popular courses offered in Yale, and it's the happiness class. Okay, I actually did it online.

Lori Vajda: 43:58

It's a great, great class, but she has this quote so that you can be objective in looking at failure. Her quote is one of the best ways of doing that, of getting better over time is to actually experience failure, to experience the consequences of messing up. She goes on to say that's what allows us to learn more about how to do things better in the future. And when you take her class, one of the things that is pointed out is you can't understand what perfect looks like until you understand what failure looks like. Wow, because you're only seeing one side. You need those two extremes in order to understand what good or good enough or poor and failing looks like. So, from that standpoint, when you flip the script, you have a better sense of what's working and what's not working. But you only have that if you can embrace both.

Lori Vajda: 44:54

That's brilliant, yeah, the third step in this is to transform your pain into power, and in that way you're gonna feel when those insecurities come up, when you are stepping into something new, when you get the stomach ache or the headache or the critical tape starts playing in your head and instead of shutting down or saying I can't experience that, instead think of it like you refer to the playground. Welcome to the party, welcome, judge Judy, my inner critic. Welcome to my party today. Acknowledge it and then continue to move forward. And the fourth step in here, which I think is really important, is to practice self care. To do that, you have to recognize the small achievement. You can't rewrite the past, that's for sure, but you can adapt into and expand your growth mindset and when you can do that, you will find that you are living with more joy, you are having a healthier lifestyle, and you will find that you've done all the things that we talked about previously here and embrace failure for what it is just an opportunity for learning something new love that.

Nola Boea: 46:13

Well, listener, we know that embracing your failure takes time and practice and will continue to revisit this topic and provide you with more tools for your toolbox in the future. And while there really is no reason to actively seek out failure, you win. Your frustrations is learning. Opportunities can help you find silver linings in those moments.

Lori Vajda: 46:33

I love the silver lining in those moments. That's really great, nola. Well, listener, we hope the ideas and thoughts we've shared here today have sparked your interest, curiosity and willingness to embrace failure so you can get excited about learning from your mistakes as well as your setbacks. Doing so will not only enhance your growth mindset. It can empower you to take on a new career, a new challenge and maybe even become a first time entrepreneur in the second half of your vibrant life. Be sure to stick around to the very end of this podcast for a fun little surprise.

Nola Boea: 47:09

If you found the information we've shared helpful and want more tools, tips and inspiration delivered to your inbox, sign up for news. You can use over on our website, sticky brand lab dot com, and remember small steps, big effects. If you found the information we've shared helpful and want more tools, tips and in In spence. In spence.

Lori Vajda: 47:34

In spence.

Nola Boea: 47:38

If you found the information Choked up.