Rethink Success: Are You Ready to Celebrate Your Failures?

When basketball star Steph Curry was moving from high school to college, he realized he needed to change how he shot the ball. Before, he used to shoot from a lower position (hip), which worked well for him as a smaller player. However, taller and faster players in college could easily block his shots.

Curry and his coaches decided to change his shooting style. They worked on raising the point where Curry released the ball, lifting it high above his head. This new way of shooting would be harder for other players to block, but it meant Curry had to completely relearn how to shoot.

As he worked tirelessly to adopt this new form, he saw his shooting accuracy drop! He said ”It was a frustrating process, but I knew it was necessary to become the player I wanted to be.” Sacrificing immediate success, he endured a temporary slump, knowing that if he stuck with it, he would come out a better player. Through relentless practice and a willingness to embrace setbacks as part of his journey, Curry eventually mastered his new shoot, transforming him later into the greatest shooter in NBA history!

Curry’s story is a powerful reminder that growth often demands a shift in focus from immediate outcomes to refining our process. By celebrating each step—even the missteps—we gain resilience and keep moving forward. Embracing both successes and failures as part of a larger journey is key to reaching our fullest potential.

❓Why Does it Matter?

This isn't about glorifying failures. Let's be honest—they're tough. They challenge how you see yourself, making you question: "Am I good enough? Am I a failure?"

That feeling you get when things don't go as planned - that's the key. Leaning into that feeling and taking time to reflect on it becomes your greatest teacher.

Edison famously said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." This means each failure is actually a necessary step forward—something you needed to learn on your path to success. And that's worth celebrating! When we say you should celebrate failures, we're not really celebrating the failure itself. We're celebrating new learning and the journey you're on. You're creating a new habit that, if repeated enough, will transform your mindset. That fear of failure will become the thrill of adventure and learning!

🧠 Adopting a New Mindset

Focusing on the process rather than just the outcomes is crucial for lasting success because the process is where growth, skill development, and resilience happen. When we commit to refining our approach, we build habits that lead to consistent progress, regardless of immediate results. This mindset encourages learning from setbacks, adapting to challenges, and steadily improving, which ultimately increases our chances of achieving meaningful, sustainable success. By concentrating on what we can control—our efforts, strategies, and mindset—we become better equipped to handle both triumphs and obstacles along the way.

The new mindset: Focus on the process (because you control it), not on the outcomes. Use outcomes & reflection as a feedback loop to perfect your process.

👍 Personal Habits & Mindsets to Adopt

1️⃣ Growth-Oriented Journaling: Keep a journal where you reflect on what went well yesterday and why. What didn't go as planned and why? This way you are capturing things that you did well and need to repeat, and what needs to be changed and discarded as you move forward.

2️⃣ Practice Self-Compassion: This is a mindset habit. When facing a setback, remind yourself to be as kind and understanding as you would be to a friend. Not to find excuses, but to respect yourself and your effort, so that you can focus on what you can improve. This reinforces a healthy relationship with failure, allowing for more learning from mistakes.

3️⃣ Embrace Experimentation: Set a personal goal to try something new weekly or monthly, even if you're unsure of the outcome. Focus on what you gain from experimenting rather than whether the attempt "succeeds."

4️⃣ Celebrate Small Wins: Make a habit of acknowledging even the smallest progress towards a goal, celebrating these moments as victories in themselves. How? Have a glass of wine, post on social media, get yourself a small treat. BTW, do the same for learnings from failures! Celebrate the fact that you acted, you tried, and that you will keep moving on.n.

✊Team Habits & Mindsets to Adopt

1️⃣ After-Action Reviews: Implement a routine for structured reviews after key projects or milestones, focusing on what was learned rather than just the end results. Encourage open sharing about mistakes as well as successes.

2️⃣ Ups & Downs Check in: this is what I do often with my team. Spend 5 min at the beginning of the meeting sharing one failure and one success from the last week. We celebrate and reflect together.

3️⃣ Failure Appreciation Wall: Create a shared space (digital or physical) where team members can post stories about their “favorite failures” and what was learned from them. This normalizes mistakes as part of growth and facilitates collective learning.

💥 Action Item

Choose one of the above proposed tools or mindsets and try it out for yourself or in your team. Experiment. Try out several of them. Start building your new success mindset today. You will 100% fail at things you haven't tried.

📺 TED Talk - The Unexpected Benefit of Celebrating Failure

Astro Teller’s TED Talk highlights how embracing and celebrating failures can drive innovation and progress. As the head of X (formerly Google X), Teller explains that by rewarding team members for discovering issues and stopping doomed projects early, they create a culture where risks are not just tolerated but actively encouraged. This mindset allows his team to learn faster and move beyond ideas that won’t work, focusing instead on ones with true potential.

🎁 Join us for our birthday party!

To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of Pulse of Change, and to thank you for being a part of our community, we’re offering something special—a free workshop on Storytelling as a Leadership Practice. Interactive workshop that will enable you to craft your personal leadership story & articulate your purpose to become an authentic, inspiring leader.

This live session will be held on November 6th at 9 AM EST (3pm CET) on Zoom. Spots are limited, so make sure to grab yours!