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I'm Kelly - the founder of She Is Fierce! and your host on our blog featuring stories and wisdom from fierce women all over the world! 

Inspiration

How Resilient Women Think About Failure

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Woman's hands knead dough on a table

 

We have all experienced failure and we get devastated, but resilient women embrace failure and reword it as a setback. Neurolinguistics has shown that when we change our words, we change our thoughts which lead to our behavior and outcomes. Therefore, when resilient women view failure as a setback, it automatically sets them to think of different ways of approaching the particular situation. In comparison, most of the population gets frustrated, upset and don’t want to think of different possibilities, and could potentially lose out on an opportunity!

My parents experienced hardship in their business when I was 12 years old and at that time, even now, they operate mass production bakeries in Kenya. We lived in Mombasa and they decided to expand the business into the capital city – Nairobi, but we didn’t do well and started swimming I remember how we could not afford to eat meat and would opt for lentil soup, rice and vegetables. Before long, they decided to shut down the businesses in Nairobi and Mombasa so they could pay off the debt.

At this point my parents had come to a crossroads. My mother had a strong desire to start a bakery again in Mombasa with the little equipment she had, but my father was adamant that he didn’t want to get into the bakery business because he was afraid of failing again. Nonetheless, she started a bakery and it flourished.

While writing my book, I asked my mother about this particular experience: “What did you do differently and how did you know it would work the next time around?”

She had thought of a few of strategies:

1. Remove the use of trucks to deliver bread into various areas and replace those with carrier bicycles that could carry a safe load of bread. This would not only eliminate gas and repair expenses, but bicycles are cheaper and they could be replaced easily.

2. Offer a commission to the bicycle vendor for every bread he sold. This would motivate him to sell more bread.

3. Open a bakery outside city limits and make bread readily available to smaller communities so they do not have to travel into the city for basic necessities. When we focus on our failures, we dwell on the past and the problems we experienced, which in turn drive the fear of failure even deeper. Resilient people think of failure as feedback. Why?

First it stops the fear of failure in its tracks. Second, feedback allows you to analyze the lessons learned from your past experience and third, putting the learning to positive use leads to the creation of new possibilities and outcome.

Notice, she didn’t think of the business that she had to shut down, as a failure, but she thought of it as ‘feedback’ because she took the learning from that experience and asked herself, “How can I make it work this time around?” She focused on the solutions rather than the problems! If you think you are faced with failure, find an opportunity of growth by asking:

  • What do I want?
  • What resources do I have?
  • What resources do I need?
  • What have I learned from this setback?
  • What can I do differently?
  • What will be the evidence of my success?

 


zaheen nanji

Zaheen Nanji is a resilience champion and a business owner in Alberta, Canada. Embracing change and fear is Zaheen’s trademark because she overcame her speech impediment, her struggles with weight and learned to live in a new country, at the age of 15, without her parents.

Her book, The Resilience Reflex – 8 Keys to Transforming Barriers into Success in Life and Business, became an International Best-Seller on Amazon Kindle. Zaheen teaches people how to make resilience their first reflex using her 3-step system: Release, Re-program and Resolve. She can be reached at zaheennanji.com

 

 

 

  1. Roxy Maza says:

    Great story about not losing heart, staying persistent in the face of challenges, and changing perspectives. I love the idea of viewing failures more as feedback and setbacks. It’s a productive way to keep moving forward, make changes to what didn’t work, and to realize mistakes or negative experiences do not define us. I’m glad to have read this piece — it’s truly wonderful and full of valuable insight. Thank you for sharing!
    http://theselfloveformula.com

  2. […] struggled to stick with them in the past, you might take a look at this short article on How Resilient Women Think About Failure. At this time of year especially, it’s important to learn from the past and move forward with […]

  3. Yvonnew says:

    Thank you for having Zaheen Nanji on your site.

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