Mindful in 5 Podcast

Failure, Your Secret Success Weapon

September 09, 2024 • Spiwe Jefferson • Season 5 • Episode 141

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Can you imagine approaching your professional setbacks with the same curiosity and resilience as a child tackling a new adventure? Join Spiwe Jefferson, attorney, certified mindfulness practitioner, and author of the Mindful in 5 book series, as we discover how to turn failures into secret success weapons. 

This episode invites you to explore the concept of a beginner's mind, drawing inspiration from childlike qualities such as trust, authenticity, creativity, resilience, and optimism. Learn how to reframe professional setbacks through our unique "clear failure reflection" technique, transforming obstacles into stepping stones for long-term success and personal growth.

In this engaging session, Spiwa shares practical tips on recalling recent challenges with gentle awareness, extracting valuable lessons, and identifying new opportunities hidden within these experiences. You'll also be guided through creating a cheerful action plan to implement these insights, helping you approach your professional journey with a fresh perspective. As Zig Ziglar famously said, "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." Tune in and find out how you can begin transforming failures into a joyful and authentic path to success today!


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Mindful in 5, where busy professionals find your peaceful oasis to thrive in complex work environments. I am Spiwa Jefferson attorney, certified mindfulness practitioner and author of the Mindful in 5 book series. Here to guide you to a clearer, softer and more supported life. Join me and your fellow Mindful Ninjas as we explore science-backed mindfulness strategies for successful leaders that you can implement, starting with just five minutes a day. Elevate your work, empower your life. Work higher, live stronger. Let's go.

Speaker 1:

Do you view professional setbacks as roadblocks clouding your path to success with self-doubt and anxiety? Seeing failure as a dead end can rob you of peace of mind, leaving you feeling unsupported and disconnected from the joyful journey of growth and learning. Journey of growth and learning. The title of our episode today is Failure your Secret Success Weapon. We're exploring how to transform failure into your secret weapon for a clearer, more cheerful path to success. And if you're wondering about the cute kids in imagery this season, we are embracing the beginner's mind by channeling childlike qualities trust, authenticity, creativity, resilience and optimism to transform our mindfulness practice and daily lives. Transform our mindfulness practice and daily lives. Let our playful cover art inspire you to approach each day with fresh eyes and an open heart For more on the beginner's mind, you can check out the Mindful in 5 Season 5 kickoff episode, where we delved into a bit more detail about this concept of the beginner's mind and how it applies to every day that we get up and go to work and get out into the world.

Speaker 1:

So back to our topic. Imagine approaching challenges with a sense of peaceful curiosity, challenges with a sense of peaceful curiosity, seeing each setback as a stepping stone to greater clarity and achievement. By reframing failure, you can create a softer, more supported approach to your professional growth. Let's explore a joyful technique called the clear failure reflection. Here's how this peaceful process works. Number one recall a recent professional setback, approaching it with gentle awareness. And before you do that, in fact, how about we do this? Stop what you're doing, if it's safe to do so, and close your eyes. Take a deep breath in, hold it, exhale Now with your eyes closed. Recall a recent professional setback, approaching it with gentle awareness.

Speaker 1:

Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment without judgment. Being present in the moment without judgment. So don't start beating yourself up. Just remember, like you are a third-party observer just watching what happened Now. Then list three clear lessons that this experience taught you and if you've never really thought about it this way, take some time to just reflect on what are the three things that you can take away from this experience. It may be helpful for you to journal. You can pick up a copy of the Mindful in 5 journal from Amazon or wherever you get your books, or spewageeffersoncom for a signed copy. But the bottom line is just give some thought to what are the three things that you can learn and take away from this recent professional setback that you had.

Speaker 1:

Next, identify one way that this thing that you consider a failure might be guiding you towards a more joyful opportunity opportunity. Sometimes it's helpful to think of setbacks not as failures, not as doors that slammed in your face, but as guides that allow you to pivot or to veer to a different and better approach to whatever it was you were trying to do. Finally, create a cheerful action plan to implement these insights. Again, journaling can help you, even after, integrate the ideas into your psyche and convert them into a clear plan of action. Show that individuals who can peacefully reframe things that they consider failures are more likely to persist in their goals and achieve clearer long-term success. So, for the perspective I would like you to take away today.

Speaker 1:

Consider this Failure isn't a roadblock on your professional journey. It is a clear signpost guiding you towards a more joyful and authentic path. Without taking the first step, you cannot take the second. My favorite motivational speaker cannot take the second. My favorite motivational speaker, zig Ziglar, used to say you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great, and I think that is so true when, even when I reflect, this is the beginning of season five of the Mindful in Five podcast series. Even when I reflect on the very first emails that I sent out that were called Mindful Momentum when Mindful in 5 was born. When I reflect on the very first generation of the Mindful Momentum website that I had back then on a whole different platform.

Speaker 1:

When I reflect on the beginning of this podcast series and I think about the progression and the sharpening of the focus and all the growth that I and all of you mindful ninjas have had with me as we have grown along this path, I'm I am loving the journey, but I also recognize that without episode one, there cannot be episode 147. Without episode two and all the things that we learned in season one, there could not be a sharper and more focused season five. So growth is a perpetual process and we are always learning, always evolving, always growing. So, whether you are thinking about it in the context of a podcast, as I am in this moment, whether you are thinking about it in terms of your own career growth, I have now passed the 30-year landmark in my professional career as a lawyer, and without year one, there couldn't be a year 30. Now it might take me five minutes to identify a problem, a risk and come up with a solution, but it didn't actually take me five minutes. It took me five minutes and the value of the 30 plus years that I have been doing this work to get to these snap judgments and this ability to quickly assess issues and challenges and find solutions in my day-to-day work. And so, as you think about your life, your career, embrace these things that you think of as failures, because only when you have those situations are we forced to think about ways to do better, be better and capitalize on those situations so that we can move forward in greater success.

Speaker 1:

Most of us learn more from failures than we learn from successes. Successes kind of help you coast and they might even increase your sense of you know self-value as you're thinking, wow, I totally got this, look at me, I'm so amazing, when in fact, sometimes that's not entirely true. Sometimes it's the value of all that you have learned. God lovers know that when we surrender our lives to God, he brings lessons and learnings and he fuels and he provides tailwinds in some situations that just catapult us forward. And so we live forever blessed and highly favored too blessed to be stressed. All the things because we understand that we serve a God who is there for us and who shepherds us and who shows us and who gives us wisdom and all of the skills and helps us to hone all the things and the ways that we show up at work every day, being more impactful, more effective, with clear joy and peace. So here is your cheerful challenge for the week Apply the clear failure reflection to a recent setback.

Speaker 1:

Notice how it brings a softer, more peaceful energy to your approach to challenges. One more time, our four steps are recall a recent professional. Oh, did I not tell you to open your eyes? You can open your eyes now. So step one recall a recent professional setback, approaching it with gentle awareness. Step two list three clear lessons this experience taught you. Step three identify one way this setback might be guiding you towards a more joyful opportunity. Step four create a cheerful action plan to implement these insights. Are you ready to transform your relationship with failure and create a more joyful, resilient professional life?

Speaker 1:

You have the access to a free downloadable takeaway that you can find either in the notes for this podcast or at spiewerjeffersoncom in the downloadable section. These kits will help you. There are free versions, there are paid versions. These kits will help you by providing exercises to reframe setbacks positively and give you techniques for building clear self-confidence, strategies for finding cheerful lessons in every experience, and you will find, in some of them as well, a 30-day challenge to cultivate a more peaceful approach to professional growth. Click on the link in the show notes to download your copy and start your journey towards a clearer, more joyful perspective on failure today. Joyful perspective on failure today. Remember, every setback carries the seeds of future success. By approaching failures with a peaceful, clear mindset, you are not just bouncing back. You are propelling yourself forward with cheerful determination. So until next week this is Spiwe saying be mindful and be well.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for listening to Mindful in 5. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend, follow and rate it on your favorite podcast platform. Pick up your signed copy of the book and journal from spiwejeffersoncom, or unsigned copies from Amazon, barnes, noble or wherever you get your books. Visit spewayjeffersoncom to download sample chapters of the book, watch videos and become a mindful ninja. Join us on the LinkedIn Mindful in 5 group and share your thoughts. Until next time, be mindful and be well.