Pivot!

Michael Scott once famously said: “I remember in high school, my math teacher told me I was gonna flunk out. And you know what I did? The very next day I went out and I scored more goals than anyone else in the history of the hockey team.” 

Now did he flunk out? Yes, no, maybe? 

But what he did was pivot.

It’s like that age old adage that humans cannot spout wings and fly no matter how much they want it. That will always be a failure. But what they can do is look at the why, come up with a plan, and pivot. Which is how we got the airplane.

Did you know that YouTube was first released as a dating site! And it failed abysmally! But the founders saw success within the failure and pivoted. Now we can’t do without it (or I can’t ;). 

You see, that’s what failure is. A chance to learn, take the lessons, build resilience, then pivot towards success! 

Failure and big ones at that give us the ability to take a look. Breathe clear air and work on why and how. Something must change in order to change the outcome. The environment, the conditions, the variables. Otherwise, the same outcome is reached. 

So every failure must see pivots, even small ones off the back of it. 

I decided a few years ago that I wanted to get into coding as a profession. It seemed to be where the job growth was. So I started with what was considered to be the easiest language to learn, Python. Now I gave it a red hot crack studying an hour a day diligently giving myself the best chance to succeed. 

4 months later I knew I had failed when I was trying to complete a rudimentary assessment which I had to consult Google each step of the way for each question. 

It was like the person on the cliff thinking they could fly. Or not quite. Could I have learned to become a coder? Yes. But the time it would take was more time than I was willing to give (years). So I pivoted to data analysis. And six months later with the routines I have developed, I gained a Professional Certificate in Data Analytics from Google. 

Now I don’t use it often but I do use the morning routine I created to study before work on a daily basis. 

Pep Talk Australia became Failurist because it more aligned with my purpose and the message I want to deliver. The services of Failurist are different to PepTalk Australia. But I may pivot again the more I fail, reflect, learn, pivot, act. 

Now let me finish this off by asking a question. What is something that you are currently failing at and how can you pivot to make it successful? I would love to know so if you are so inclined send me an email at the@failurist.com 

If you need to talk to someone about your failures and how to pivot you can do so here at failurist.com/bookings

If you have got to the end of this just remember, no matter how this finds you that failure is an event not a state. But it does taste like shit and it does hurt. But keep pushing because success will eventually present itself in some type of form and you will be richer for the experience… eventually.