An overachievers guide to dealing with failure

Last week I had lunch with a professor I had in community college. She teaches Latin American Humanities, and we chatted about my current endeavor to learn Spanish.

We laughed as she recounted how hard it must be for an overachiever like myself to learn a language because I hate to make mistakes. I threw my hands up in laughter and yelled "yess that's so true!!"

I'm journaling about my experience learning Spanish (as part of an exploration of my biracial identity) for a future book, and in my journal one of the most frequent patterns is my fear of failure.

Because, as I've come to realize, learning a language, like many other difficult and worthwhile things in life, requires failure.  You have to make mistakes to learn a language. If you're not willing to make mistakes, you'll never learn.

And boy, do I hate that! 

As an overachiever, we love our A's, we love syllabi that lay out exactly what we have to do to get that A, and we get a high from doing exactly what we need to do to succeed. We love the rush of a 100% on an exam or getting back an essay with few red marks.

However, life doesn't quite work this way, and it often leads to a lot of anxiety after college; and sadly it sometimes stunts the potential of many overachievers - because failure terrifies us.

But as I've learned, it's not so bad once you realize failure is kind of like its own college class to be aced. It has much to teach us, and if we become a student of failure, we can still be 'overachivers' in the ways we deal with it.

Here are a few tips I've learned over the past few years as I've failed to roll my r's and gone through the many failures that come after graduating college and starting a business: 

1. Read biographies of people you admire

How to Be Like Walt by Pat Williams is the book that helped me deal with the twenty-something crisis I experienced after I graduated college. I'm a big Disney fan but never knew much about the man behind the mouse. The book was recommended to me by my first professional mentor, and reading about Walt Disney's failures struck a strong chord with me.

This book helped me understand that failure was part of the journey for every super successful person. I noticed how Walt dealt with failure, how he learned from it, how he stayed imaginative, and how he never stopped building his skills and thinking about how he could add value to others.

Browse a few biographies or memoirs of really successful people whom you think are intriguing, and, as you read their story, analyze the failure parts. Focus on the timeline. Understand the years and the heartache success requires. And notice how these people dealt with the failures in their lives. Because they'll have gone through many more failures than you ever realized. 

2. Consider comedians

I'm a huge entertainment and pop culture junky, and I've always been fascinated with comedy. Confession: I'm not funny. In social situations you'll find me as a happy audience member; I love to laugh and I love surrounding myself with funny friends. But I've never been that person.

And recently I've realized it's partly because of my overachiever-nature. To be funny, you have to be willing to be unfunny.

I've read a few books about stand up comedians and learned that most of them, especially the most popular ones, test out their material in small clubs and work and rework their stuff until every single bit gets a laugh. 

The funny people in my life often tell jokes that fall flat. But because they keep telling jokes, they eventually make everyone red in the face with laughter. I admire funny people. It's an art that requires great courage, and it's an art to be learned from. 

3. Learn

At the Phi Theta Kappa International convention this past year speaker and tennis champion Billie Jean King said something I'll never forget: Choose to see failure as feedback.

If you take away the negative association with failure you take away its power. It's simply feedback to help you get closer to reaching your goals. Learn from it. Grow from it. And don't let it get the best of you. 

4. Laugh

"Isa, oh my gosh are you okay? Are you hurt? " my husband yells through the other side of my office door. 

"Yes, I'm fine" I yell back, laughing. "I'm just working on rolling my r's."

;)

Never let the fear of failure keep you from taking chances; it's the only way to grow, and the best way to get better. 

Video: The 2 options you have after failure

It's never too late to succeed in college...even if you've dropped out

Some people might think failing college (or even high school) means you're not "college material." Josh's story reminds us that that's simply not true. 

Is there anything you feel like you've failed at in your life? Read Josh's story and let it inspire you to try again. You may surprise yourself.

When Joshua Trader graduated high school in 2004, his parents gave him two choices: go to college or get a full time job.

Joshua spent his growing up years in Sanford, Michigan, watching his parents work very hard for little pay in order to put food on the table for him and his five siblings.

Joshua loved and appreciated his parents’ struggles, but he didn’t want to repeat them, and thought college would be the answer: “I wasn’t excited about college, but I thought it would be better than work.”

Halfway through his first semester at the nearby Delta College, Joshua became bored. Driving 35 minutes to campus, sitting through hours of classes, and then driving back home began to hold little reward for him.

“It got old really quick,” he says of his routine. “I had no motivation, no real reason for college; I just thought it would be the better choice.” The lack of interest showed in his grades; he was failing. Read the rest of the article on the Pearson Students Blog. 

What Disney & Pixar teach us about failure

When you think of Pixar, the last word that probably comes to your mind is failure. 

Disney Pixar's first movie (and the first computer animated feature film ever) was Toy Story; it released in 1995 and grossed over $192 million. 

And since then every single movie they have released has been a hit. Every single one: A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Cars, Wall-E, Brave....any of this ring a bell? 

This is unheard of. How are they so successful? 

Before I answer that question, I also want to consider a Disney film you may have heard of: Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty and the Beast was released in 1991 and was the first animated film to win a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture. 

Beauty and the Beast and Toy Story have something important in common that I think is integral to Disney Pixar's continued success. 

Both films were, at first, complete failures.

Not the films we saw, of course. But the creative teams initially developed scripts and storyboards for entire films that were supposed to be the first Toy Story and Beauty and the Beast. But they weren't. Because they failed.

The studios had invested millions of dollars in these first scripts and storyboards. But when the final teams saw the stories they felt something was missing - the stories fell flat and just didn't work. So they decided to lose millions, scrap the entire thing, and ask the team to start all over again. 

Can you imagine how awful that must have felt? To work on something for so long, with so much dedication, thinking it's good, and then having to do it all over again? 

And can you imagine losing millions of dollars because you thought something wasn't good enough? 

But they did. They all thought it was worth the risk, and they did not want to produce anything that they didn't believe would be great.

I think a huge part of Disney Pixar's success is their willingness to start over, and to never settle for less than, well, magic.

This idea applies to all of us, especially to community college students. Many of you may feel like you have started over. I've even met adult students who say they feel like they are starting a little late in the game. 

I also meet people who see what I've done by the age of 25 and feel like they haven't accomplished enough. And to that I always say "phooey" (okay I don't use that exact word because it would be weird, but I use it in my head). I think the bravest people in the world are the ones who are willing to say "scrap that I'm starting over."

Never be afraid to start from scratch if something isn't working. Never be afraid to own a failure. Those who are willing to take those risks and not settle for anything less will find the kind of unbelievable success that only grows from the seeds of failure. 

If you too are a Disney & Pixar fan you will love the documentaries The Pixar Story and Waking Sleeping Beauty. Both of these films inspired this blog post, and inspired me more than I can say. 

From a 1.3. GPA to a 3.5: How one CC student didn't let his learning disability get in the way

Since I've been writing and speaking about community college students I've heard more stories than I can count about students who've taken a GPA in the one-point digits and raise it up two points and above and graduate with honors. They never cease to astound me. This is not an easy thing to do. But every story affirms it can be done. 

And one such story recently came to me from Austyn who has just graduated with his B.S. in Psychology from the University of Central Florida and is on his way to graduate school.

When Austyn began community college he faced a barrier many students face: a learning disability. His effected his reading comprehension, and college became instantly difficult."I really struggled to understand all the material and it wasn't easy. I had a really hard time my first couple years of college; I felt like I was the only person struggling."

Austyn ended up receiving a 1.3 GPA in his early semesters. 

Austyn admits there were times he felt like giving up. 

But he didn't.

Austyn took the initiative to ask for help - the secret to college success in my opinion, and yet something too few students do. He went to the tutoring center and the disabilities office and took advantage of all the resources his community college had to offer.

These services helped Austyn raise his GPA enough to be able to graduate from community college and transfer to the University of Central Florida. 

While at UCF, he then developed a relationship with his advising research professor. "He believed in me and in turn really helped me believe in myself and work harder than I ever worked in my life. I didn't know what he saw in me when he asked me to do research for him, but his encouragement really invigorated me."

A few weeks ago Austyn graduated with his B.S. in Psychology from the University of Central Florida with a 3.5 GPA at UCF and a 3.0 overall. 

He's now working on applying to Columbia University for graduate school. 

Austyn's advice based on his experience? Simple: "Never give up, try to find some way to believe in yourself, don't let other people's comments get to you, and always try your best. Life is really hard, but if you get knocked down, just get back up.

I would love to hear your story - it's as easy as answering a few questions. You'd be surprised at how much sharing your experience can inspire someone else. Just go to isaadney.com/blog/you to learn how. Thank you so much!