“There are no failures-just experiences and your reaction to them.”

Tom Krause

On today’s Monday Motivation, Corry discusses GROWTH with Suzy Sammons. 

Suzy is a brand strategy expert and creative storyteller. She has led a long, award-winning career with creative agencies like TBWA\Chiat\Day, Saatchi; Saatchi, 180LA, serving Fortune 500 brands across categories. She has served as CEO of a nonprofit in media and entertainment, and today she oversees the client services for a growing creative agency in Nashville, Tennessee. Suzy also has her own personal story of transformation and growth and is writing the story of her family’s legacy in a book (and movie) called Collisions. Suzy and her husband Steve live in Nashville and enjoy a blended, beautiful family of six children and two English retrievers.

If you’d like help clarifying your brand and growing your business, you can connect with Suzy on her website at www.hawkeye.pro.

What is failure? Some synonyms of failure are breakdown, stoppage, malfunction, crash, and collapse. Have you experienced a collapse in a relationship? A stoppage in finances? Any malfunction with your plans? A crash in your efforts? A breakdown in communication? 

If you can answer yes to any of those questions, you can celebrate. Those malfunctions are opportunities for you to grow and to learn. So, how do we grow from failure? Well, the questions we ask ourselves immediately following any failure will determine whether or not we learn. Asking questions that lead to understanding creates growth. Asking questions that lead to searching for someone or something to blame prohibits growth. When we blame others for our failures we compromise the possibility to learn and grow from those experiences.

Have you ever found yourself dealing with the same failure over and over? If so, you can, again, celebrate. You see, when the same problem shows up again and again, it is providing you with as many opportunities necessary for you to learn and grow in that area. If the same failure keeps showing up, see it as extra chances to work through that problem. Don’t dwell on the failures. Instead see each failure as a highly valuable learning experience that can provide you a treasure of wisdom and understanding.

Below are some great questions you can ask yourself to create a learning experience from any failure:

• What lessons have I learned from this situation?

• What can I be grateful for from this experience?

• What can I do to turn this failure into a success?

• Where do I go from here?

• Who else has failed in this way before, and how can that person (or their experience) help me?

• How can my experience help others someday to keep from failing in this area?

• What were some of the contributing factors to this failure?

• Where did I succeed as well as fail?

I encourage you today- use every single failure as an opportunity to grow and learn. Use the questions above to grow from your most recent failure and enjoy the growth it will create for you.