Tips For Reframing Problems & Failure

I heard 2 things this week that really helped me change my perspective on the ideas of problems and failure.

Failure

Do you know Sara Blakely?  The creator of Spanx?  Love this woman!  She’s so inspiring so when a video of her was making it’s way around Facebook this week, I had to click and see what she had to say.  She was talking about how  when she was a kid her father encouraged her to have failures each week because that at least meant she was trying.  She reframed the definition of failure to mean not trying something, versus focusing on what the outcome would be.  How great is that?  If you look at it that way wouldn’t it be much easier to go after what you want?

Here’s the link to the video in case you want to watch.

Problems

Another person I really love is Tony Robbins.  I went to one of his live events back when I was in my 20’s and couldn’t really appreciate it.  I remember being a little cynical and weirded out about all the hype and having to hug strangers around me.   Fast forward to today and I would LOVE to go to one of his events!  He had a movie come out this week called I Am Not Your Guru.  It’s a behind the scene documentary of his live event called Date With Destiny.  I started watching yesterday and only got halfway through and already took so many notes!  One thing that stuck out was that he said “our problems are what make us grow“.  Again, it’s just a reframing thing but it really has an impact.  If you take  a problem as something you can learn from, overcome and then help others going through the same thing, isn’t that so much more powerful than just focusing on it as just being a problem that you have to deal with?  It’s definitely put me in a different frame of mind!

You can catch that movie on Netflix but I must warn you it can be really powerful and emotional.  Be ready!

If you watch either of these, let me know what insights you took from them.