Failing Gloriously

Let's get really , really , really comfortable with trying and not achieving , because there's only one difference between trying and not achieving , and that is the willingness to fail . Failure is a thought . It is not a fact . At Islamic Life Coach School , I go really far in trying to teach you guys the difference between objective and subjective .

Anything subjective can be changed based on what you decide to think about it . Same is true for failure . Failure is not a fact . Even a big red F on a graded school paper can really mean different things to different people . A failing grade on a paper is just that . It's up to you , as a human mind carrier , to make it mean what you will .

Some people are bothered by it . Some people are unfazed . The letter grade F , the missed deadline , forgetting your child's soccer game , distracted driving and rear-ending another car are only failures if you think they are . Failure is only final if we don't finish the task we set out to do . Missing the deadline for a project .

Forgetting to submit a college assignment is only a failure if you finalize your task . But , as usual , I'm going to give you a life-changing trick . I'm going to invite you to ask one question At any given moment . If you feel like a failure , ask yourself what has this taught me ? Because this question will turn the finalization of the process into a journey .

Remember , we just said it is only a failure if you finalize your journey . So if you never stop taking steps , there's no failure . So if you never stop taking steps , there's no failure . And this question what has this experience taught me ? Turns a destination into a rest .

Stop Meaning , if you're trying to pitch a business idea to investors and they do not respond as well as you had hoped , your brain is going to look at it as a failure if you consider this as a final stop of your journey . Instead , in that moment in time , ask yourself what did this experience teach me ?

When you ask this question , your presentation to the investors becomes a part of the process . It becomes a link in the chain of ongoing events until you have a business . Because once you answer that question , it gives you a chance to learn and apply that new learning to the next set of investors .

Or let's say you asked for a raise and your request was turned down . It is only a failure if you consider this a final step . If you ask yourself what has this rejection taught me ? This becomes a part of the process in the bigger scheme of things , where you might be trying to move up in the corporate world .

When you don't ask this question what has this experience taught me ? You turn every failure into a dead end . So there was a point where I did very poorly in an organic chemistry exam as an undergrad . There was a particular professor that everyone dreaded and his exams were notoriously hard . Knowing that , the university gave us an option .

They said that if your grade after the first exam is not acceptable to you , you have the option of dropping the class altogether . Take a more basic chemistry class and your bad grade from the organic chemistry class will never show up on the transcript .

After you've taken the basic chemistry , you will have a chance to come back and take this difficult class again . So , as imagined , the first midterm was super hard . I studied endless hours , study groups , resources . I did all of it , but I remember so clearly .

I came out of the exam , so run down and drained , and I was talking to some of my other friends I was pre-medicine and they were pre-pharmacy and we all said we think we failed the exam . That was a gray and heavy moment for me . I was always used to doing so well in my studies .

I had perfect A's in all of my classes for as long as I could remember , and there , there , it was organic chemistry that was going to taint my winning streak in just one exam . Finally , when the grades came out , everyone got an 80 plus percent .

I was shocked , because there is such a thing as curving the grade , where the professor adds a certain percentage to the whole class's grade to bring it up . So everyone got a reasonably good grade . All of the friends that I was taking the class with ended up doing reasonably well , but , believe it or not , I actually failed that exam .

My grade was so bad that even curving it up didn't help me pass . I was devastated . This was a real identity crisis for me , because I've always identified as a straight-A , hard-working student and some people call it being nerdy and yeah , I was nerdy most of my life .

When I shared this news with my friend , they were mostly just staring at my face because they didn't know what to say and how to help me . I definitely thought about quitting . I told myself this is extremely difficult . Pre-medicine is not for me . But alhamdulillah , right in that moment , I had the presence of mind to know that I have a choice .

I could make this failure create a dead end for me , or I could make it another link in the chain of events and a transition or a teaching point . So I treated it as a fork in the road . I asked myself this question what has this experience taught me ? Maybe it's that I'm not ready for organic chemistry quite yet . Maybe I took this class too early .

Maybe it's possible that I'm not cut out for pre-medicine , or maybe it's possible that it's not the right time . Just out of curiosity , I decided that I'm going to give it another chance . I dropped the organic chemistry class , took the more remedial basic chemistry and , as promised , my bad grade was wiped out .

I ended up taking basic chemistry alone , without my friends , which was hard , but alhamdulillah , I got an A in that class . Next semester , I re-enrolled in organic chemistry and got an A in both organic chemistry 1 and 2 . Graduated with a nearly perfect GPA as an undergrad , alhamdulillah .

What I want you to take out from this is in the moment it becomes hard to see the choice , but the more you practice , the easier it will come to you . If I had made that failure mean something about me , I would have created a dead end .

I would have started my journey again , and possibly not even as a pre-medicine student , and my life would have looked much different right now . But let me tell you I do not regret being curious , I do not regret asking that question . That single question practically saved my life , because becoming a doctor had been my lifelong dream .

Just as a side note , these types of courses are labeled as weed-out courses , where they make them difficult enough to weed out a certain population , just so they would give up and only qualified students would proceed in the career of medicine or other difficult sciences . I think this is somewhat of an unfair practice , but that's a topic for another day .

You will always have an option of turning your failure into a dead end . You can turn back around and start over . It's like starting a mountain climb all over again . You go up the mountain , you run into an obstacle , you come back down and you start the climb again in some other area , this process is extremely ineffective .

Again , in some other area , this process is extremely ineffective . This , possibly , is the best way to continue to recycle a mediocre life . Or , on the other hand , you have the option of making the failure into a part of the process . I am going to teach you how to fail .

I'm going to teach you how to fail remarkably because I honestly believe a Muslim woman is the backbone of the Muslim ummah , because I honestly believe a Muslim woman is the backbone of the Muslim Ummah . She shapes the generations to come . Her mindset is the key to her success .

Her single thought is a unit of her and her generation's success , which then translates in the success of this dunya and akhira inshallah . This is why I have dedicated all of my efforts into optimizing the mindset of the Muslim woman . So you will fail . You will fail , remarkably , with grace and candor .

I'm going to have you make best friends with failure , because you absolutely need it . So , inshallah , from here on out , in any event of your life , you will be failing gloriously , making it a chain of events , not a dead end .

One way to describe failure is that you are not meeting your own expectations , or failure means that you are not taking the required or optimal action , then we are left to feel feelings of rejection , fear of failure and the same old mind drama of not-enoughness . But come to think of it , these feelings of rejection and failure come from your thoughts .

So at any given moment , if you're feeling rejection because of failure , it is because of your choice of thoughts you're having . So really feeling like a rejection is up to you and our actions become a circumstance . How we feel about what actions we took or omitted to take depends on our thoughts about it . The circumstance might be I burned dinner .

Thought is how could I do this ? I can't even pay attention . The feeling might be of anger or rejection . Remember , you are the only one experiencing your own feelings . Even if you're feeling angry at the burnt dinner , you are the one experiencing , experiencing your own feelings .

Even if you're feeling angry at the burnt dinner , you are the one experiencing the feeling of anger and the subsequent action you might take will be the result of these feelings . So the failed attempt at dinner has you feeling angry , but that is completely optional .

Or there's a board meeting and technology fails you , as it often does , and you forget the part of your presentation your feelings of failure are going to come from your thoughts about these actions . So the only reason we're avoiding missing the mark or taking suboptimal action and calling it failure is because we don't want to experience the way it feels .

But the ironic thing is , how we feel is always up to us , so we can always choose to not feel like a failure . In more general terms , let's say you decided to do something and you have a certain expectation from the result , and you did not meet that expectation .

The only feeling that you will experience , based on that missed expectation , will come from your thoughts about it , and , as always , you have a choice of your thoughts . If you consider the event in a dejecting and a hurtful way , that's exactly how you will feel . So , universally , our thoughts create our feelings .

So when you don't meet your own expectations , the only feeling that you will experience will be based on what you decide to think about the situation . So the ironic thing is that the reason you're avoiding failing is because you're avoiding how it makes you feel , which is actually in your control .

So you don't have to choose those feelings of fear , rejection or failure . What ends up happening when you avoid failure is that we're avoiding something that you are in charge of , and then you're acting like it's happening to you from an outside force . This is the concept that I drill extremely deeply into my clients' heads in Empowered Muslim Women program .

In an experience of a perceived failure , we lose sight of this point of control . So in an individual coaching session , I help my clients practice this exact method until they've mastered this concept . So failure doesn't just happen to you and you don't have to sit there and experience it like you're bound by it .

What actually happens is that if we miss an expectation or if there's an omission of action on our part , then we decide to make it mean something that hurts , which is completely optional . Let's imagine you're a fitness instructor and you want 20 people showing up for your class . You market it and the response is really good , but only three people show up .

You can tell yourself oh my god , this was such a failure . I'm never going to do something like this again because this feels so terrible . All of those thoughts right there are a choice You're training new employees and they just won't learn . A mission of action on your part would be that you fail to teach them the way they learn best .

Choosing to think of it as a failure is up to you If you want to recite the Quran with proper tajweed and you keep missing the mark . Arabic is not your first language , your accent is heavy , your teacher corrects your same mistake over and over again . You can choose to be frustrated .

You can choose to blame your primary language and you can choose to think of it as a failure Again , all optional . Or you can continue the task , practice the proper pronunciation of the Arabic letters and monitor your progress . Failure , technically , is a part of the process . It's always going to be there .

Clients tell me we are waiting for the day when we will actually see a transformation and don't fail anymore . We are waiting for the day when we don't make any mistakes and always make the right decisions and we always take the right actions . And I open to them some hard truths that this type of transformation does not exist .

The only type of transformation you can achieve is what you make each failure mean , how you can integrate that into your journey . There will be no one particular day after which you make no mistakes . That will not happen on this earth . Failure-free life does not exist and the transformation is only in your point of view .

This is excellent , excellent news because your point of view is the only thing that is in your control . What are you making your actions and your results mean ? Failure is subjective . Ask yourself this question what has this taught me ?

If you're making a failure mean something negative , then don't flip into a positive narrative , because that can turn into toxic positivity . Instead , turn to curiosity , turn to questioning . How could this be ? For me , embracing failure is a skill to learn . It is something that you're going to practice and get good at with time .

My daughter is currently enrolled in martial arts and her instructor taught her how to fall down properly . This is just like failing properly . You cannot avoid falling while you're doing a physical activity that you're just learning and notice how . His teaching isn't around how not to fall down or how to avoid falling down .

His teaching is around how to fall and stay protected , how to fall with grace . This example is also very evident in toddlers when they're learning how to walk . They fall a lot and they fall hard , but they get up because each falls make them stronger and it teaches them how to walk better the next time .

If , after falling , they stayed on the ground because they thought to themselves walking is not for me , they would never learn to walk . But luckily for them , toddlers have not yet learned that negative self-narrative . But as adults we've practiced this type of narrative so much that it seems factual . But we can unlearn it .

One way to untether the negative narrative of failures is to actually learn the techniques of successful people . There are people out there who keep failure journals . They tell themselves in the business if I'm not experiencing at least five failures a month , I'm not reaching my target . Lack of failures means lack of progression .

To them that's a completely different perspective . Like , if you're a business owner , if at least 10% of the people are not returning your product or asking for a refund , then you're not doing enough business . If you're trying healthy habits and at least one of your children is not complaining about the new food , then you're not trying enough healthy recipes .

If you start gauging your progress from the amount of failures you've accumulated , that will propel your life so much that it will be unrecognizable , inshallah . So in the upcoming year I want you to commit to failing . I want you to commit to failing gloriously , with commitment , with intent .

I wish marvelous and magnificent failures for all of you , because I know when you do that you're actually getting closer to where you want to be . There's a saying that if you want to be successful faster , double your rate of failures and you have to have your back when you're doubling your rate of failure .

When I personally start accumulating failures , the most magical thing happens . I start telling myself okay , I've achieved one failure , now four more to go on this project . And then I start looking forward to things that might go wrong . And then I reevaluate and fix what can be done better the next time .

And this is so fascinating because with practice now , I don't consider anything as a failure . Now , when I do things , knowing full well that most of them are out of my current capacity , I know that I'm only going to be accumulating learning opportunities . I don't engage in the shame , regret , disappointment narrative . Those thoughts are optional .

I don't waste any cognitive effort on those types of thoughts and that has been so liberating . My self-shaming voice had been very loud all of my life , but that can be undone . There were times when my anxiety would reach record levels just at the thought of me actually doing something difficult .

But with this work , I could tell you , anxiety might present but it does not overtake me . I can manage all of those thoughts of anxiety and failure

just using my mind . Alhamdulillah , your anticipation of failure will completely change your momentum towards success . So I encourage you to start keeping a failure journal using the methods I've taught you in this podcast . To start keeping a failure journal Using the methods I've taught you in this podcast .

With that , I make dua to Allah SWT that failures become integrated into our journey so seamlessly that success becomes an inevitable side effect . I pray that we recognize that by calling ourselves a failure , we are literally challenging Allah SWT's design . Allah sent us on this earth to strive .

I pray to Allah that he gives us intelligence , presence and security in our humanness to strive in His path . I make sincere dua to Him that we come to recognize that every failure in this world is just a part of the journey . This path is only finalized in the hereafter , and may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala raise us to be among the successful .

Inshallah , I will talk to you guys next time .