I have extracted the following tips from the book “Psycho-cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz, first published in 1969. It is one of the most interesting books I have read and I encourage you to read it. However, since many of you won’t have the time I have decided to extract some important parts and turn them into tips and advice for startup founders and anyone else for that reason who has met with failure in their journey or feels a failure.

Failure is nothing bad. We just need to understand the signal from our body and emotions and then use the signal to our advantage. There is a lot of power to be harnessed from failure and it is always a part of the journey towards success.

In the last blog post we split FAILURE into 7 letters and in this first blog post we will review the first letter “F”. F for “Frustration”.

FRUSTRATION is an emotional feeling which arises whenever you feel that you have not reached some important goals or that you cannot reach or when you are thwarted off course. That’s all.

This is one feeling that almost every single human must have felt at least once and in most cases several times in their lives. It is only natural that we miss a target, or meet unexpected obstacles in our path, and when this happens we invariably feel frustrated.

In order to understand where this feeling stems from we must go back to our childhood to see where this feeling was developed. In the early years of our lives and mostly as infants, we are unable to care for ourselves. If we are hungry we cry, if we are thirsty we cry, and for solving most of our problems we express our discontent and dissatisfaction and a helping hand (carer or parent) resolves the problem for us. So we learn that by expressing our frustration with these feelings it gets resolved.

Unfortunately, many people fail to unlearn and change this learnt habbit and when they feel frustrated as adults they simply express their discontent and dissatisfaction. No need to say that this will not resolve the problem at hand.

If you feel frustrated it is simply because you have not met your goal or reached your objectives at a given point. What we need to do is be aware of the emotional signal, understand to interpret it, and apply a new learnt method.

Now that you know the feeling, the next time this emotional signal flares up, the next time you feel frustrated, all you need to do is start reviewing why you are feeling that way. What goal or objective have you not reached and why?

For example, if you had an objective of selling 100 products per month and you have only achieved 50, then all you need to do is re-examine this objective and adjust your goal and that failure turns into an instant success. Of course, it is not to say that you drop and not aim high, but facts are facts. If you have achieved selling 50 units, it is still an achievement. Celebrate it. You have made some progress. You just need to adjust the bar, reassess the path and now you can work on how you can improve it with a calm and happy mind.

A simple reinterpretation of the feeling can help you adjust your emotion, make you feel good about your achievement, and allow you to work towards your objectives with energy and good vibes.

THIS IS THE POWER OF FAILURE, lesson 1. Frustration is only an emotional signal that needs reinterpreting.

In the next blog post, we will look at the second letter in FAILURE. The letter A for AGGRESSIVENESS, which is simply misdirected energy.

I help entrepreneurs throughout their journey. Are you feeling FRUSTRATED, give me a call. Together we can sort it