How To Bounce Back From Failure Stronger Than Ever

Failure is inevitable. It’s how you bounce back from failure that defines you.

I don’t mean to be negative with the following statement. It is just realistic.

Not everything that you do in your life or business will be a success!

If you are going to be working in the real estate investing market this is always volatile. Property prices go up and down all the time. One week a specific area of the country is the hottest prospect for investment. The next week it is somewhere else. Any business is going to have its ups and downs.

I have experienced a number of real estate investment failures and always bounced back. Let me give you an example. A few years ago, a good friend of mine who was also in the business recommended that I invest in some properties in an area of the country I was not familiar with.

“You just can’t lose” he told me.

This guy had always been on the money in the past so I went ahead and made the investment.

It was a disaster. I still have some of these properties and they barely break even. Some of them are making a loss. I can’t sell them either.

At the time this devastated me because I had not experienced failure in my real estate investment business before.

But I used a number of techniques to deal with the failure and move on. I have never looked back.

Bounce Back from Failure Meaning

What does bouncing back from failure mean? It is the way that you respond to a setback in your life. You have made a decision in your business (or your life) and things did not turn out as expected. This disappoints you but you need to take action to get back on track.

Some people will become overwhelmed by any failures that they experience and may not be able to bounce back at all. Their stress levels increase so much that they just cannot handle the situation and they decide to quit to relieve the pain.

You need to be more resilient than this. Think about the bigger picture here.

Why do people bounce back after failing at something? Because they want it really badly! They focus on the big picture and the goals that they are trying to achieve.

This helps to put the failure in perspective and they are able to move forward.

7 Strategies To Bounce Back From Failure

 I do not want you to throw in the towel with your business if you experience a major setback. Major setbacks have really tested my commitment to my business over the years, but by using these 7 strategies to bounce back from failure I was able to keep going and achieve my goals: 

1. You need to Prepare yourself for Failure

Without a doubt the best way I have found to move on from failure is to plan for it in advance. This might sound a little crazy but trust me it works.

Nobody wants to experience failure, but if you don’t plan for it then when it arrives it can have a catastrophic effect.

I have said a number of times that real success in real estate investment comes from taking risks. Doing those things that others are not prepared to do.

When you find these kinds of projects it is normal to have an emotional attachment to them. This is not a good idea as the pain from failure can be excruciating.

You just need to accept that failure is a stepping stone to success. It is important that you change the way that you perceive failure. Don’t go around thinking that you are doomed to bad luck and nothing good will ever happen to you.

This is nonsense.

Things go wrong and something unexpected usually happens. The perfect business doesn’t exist and nor will it ever exist. Get your escape plan ready. You need a contingency plan if things go really wrong.

Develop your mindset to handle the worst situation. Never be afraid from starting again at square one if you have to.

2. My 5 Tips To Bounce Back From Failure

Failure Tip 1 – Don’t take it personally

This is easy to say but hard to do. When you experience a failure in your business it is very tempting to blame yourself for getting involved in that business in the first place.

Avoid beating yourself up over this or physically beating your head against the wall. Neither of these things will help you to think clearly and move on.

Avoid the trap of thinking that failure and bad luck are your destiny. The fact that you had the courage to start your own business and take risks speaks volumes about you.

Most people would never have the guts to do what you have done so feel proud about yourself. The majority will die poor and never experience the highs that you have had.

Everyone makes mistakes and will always do so. When you take the necessary risks that you need to in business, some things are not going to turn out the way that you planned them.

You don’t have all of the answers and nor does anyone else so don’t take any failure personally.

Failure Tip 2 – Be Responsible for your Failures

You will only fail because you took action and it didn’t work out as you had planned. Average people never take this kind of action and are always the first to criticize. Don’t listen to them. Be proud of the fact that you had the courage of your convictions in the first place.

When you take responsibility for your failures it is a giant step towards handling them and moving on. Don’t start a “witch hunt” looking for someone else to blame. If you made the wrong decision about a property like I did then admit it.

I didn’t blame my friend for this failure. I didn’t check everything out as I normally do. It was my fault so I moved on. Taking responsibility for any failures does not mean that they are all your fault.

But you are the owner of your business so the buck stops with you.

Failure Tip 3 – Let the Emotion out

Don’t try to suppress your emotions if you fail. If you need to hide away and cry then do that. Just let all of your emotions out and bear in mind that the point in time when you experienced this pain will be very inspiring for you in the future.

Bottling up your emotions about a failure is not healthy. It can increase your stress levels and overwhelm you to the point where you cannot think clearly. Tell yourself that it is natural to experience emotion when a failure occurs.

Let it all out and then move forward.

Failure Tip 4 – Find out why the Failure occurred

When you have calmed down you need to analyze the failure and find out what went wrong. This can be painful at first but just do it anyway. Where did it all go wrong?

What could you have done to prevent the project from failing?

You need to ask these and similar questions and find definitive answers. This will be invaluable for you going forward. Everyone makes mistakes and smart people learn from them.

There is always a reason why something didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to. Ask yourself the right questions to find that reason.

Failure Tip 5 – Treat Failure as a way to Learn and Grow

When you start to see any failures that you experience as a way for you to learn and grow as a person then you will look at it in a different light. Failures are not always within your control.

Someone else may have let you down or there was a change in your market that was unpredictable.

Look upon every failure that you experience as providing you with new knowledge. In this way, you will be smarter the next time around. If someone has let you down then you can tighten up your processes for checking the progress of projects for example.

You can also learn from an unpredictable change in the market that you will take into account in the future.

3. What Lessons can you Learn from Failing?

When I failed with the properties that my friend recommended the biggest lesson that I learned was to never make a real estate investment without thoroughly checking everything out first.

Since then, I have never just purchased a property because someone else thought it was the right thing to do.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t listen to people that have more experience than you. One of the things that I always recommend for people with their own business is to find a good mentor.

When you receive advice from someone that you respect and trust, it is still your responsibility to check everything out and decide to act or not.

You need to find out what lessons your failure will teach you. It is really important that a failure teaches you at least one lesson. Why?

Because if you cannot answer the question “what did I learn from this failure?” then it is much more likely that you will experience similar failures again.

4. Use Failure to strengthen your Resolve for Success

You can either use a failure in your property business to strengthen your resolve for success or you can see it as the beginning of the end. I know which one I prefer! Don’t feel doomed by a failure.

Make a commitment to yourself to be smarter and more diligent in the future because of it.

Use a failure to inspire you to succeed. See the failure as a positive thing. Don’t let it become a millstone around your neck that weighs you down. It is something that happened in your past.

Learn from it and move on.

5. Use Failure to drive you to Start Again

If I had let my failure weigh me down then I wouldn’t still be in the property investment business and I wouldn’t be sharing this with you either. OK the failure hurts financially and emotionally.

So do you have the courage to carry on after this?

In the real estate investment business you are not defeated until you give up. So don’t give up. It may take you a while to recover from the failure but you can always start again.

Do what you have to do to get back in the saddle and move your business forward.

6. Do not Dwell on your Failures

How to bounce back when life knocks you down? One of the things that I find always helps me to move forward with any failures that I experience is not to dwell on them.

Naturally, you are going to feel bad when the failure occurs (a failure may even devastate you), but it is essential that you do not drag it into your future by dwelling on it.

Let all of your emotions out, find out why the failure occurred and then take action to prevent this happening again. Learn and grow from your failures and then let them go. How can I forget my failure?

If the thought of a past failure occurs in your head, then neutralize this by thinking “I have learned from that and moved on”. Do not let a negative thought spiral occur with the thought of past failures. Dwelling on past failures will just bring you down.

7. Motivate yourself Immediately after a Failure

How do you motivate yourself after failure? There are several things that you can do. If you have a WHY statement (which you should) then read this immediately after the failure occurs.

This will inspire you to deal with the failure and move on with your business and your life.

Another way to motivate yourself after a failure is to reflect on the successes that you have already experienced. These successes do not have to be directly related to your business.

If you do have some business successes then I would definitely recommend that you wallow in the glory of these.

Check your posture after you have experienced a failure. Are you slumped over with your head down? If so, straighten up. Your physical posture will have a significant impact on your state.

You cannot be happy and inspired if your posture is wrong. Stand up and hold your head up and your chest out. Change your posture to change to a more positive state.

My Final Thoughts on How to Bounce Back from Failure Stronger Than Ever

Nobody enjoys experiencing failure but it is a part of life that you cannot avoid. When you have your own business, things are going to go wrong sooner or later.

No matter how big or small the failure is, you need to handle it properly so that you learn from it and keep going.

I hope that you got a lot out of my “how to bounce back from failure stronger than ever” post. This is a combination of my own experience of dealing with failure and also learning how others dealt with failure and managed to bounce back stronger than ever.

I would love to hear your thoughts or experiences. Please add them to the comments section bwlow.

Thank you and have a great day.