I took part in a great Leadership Live Google Hangout yesterday with some friends and colleagues of mine in the #LeadWithGiants Google+ Community.  My friend LaRae Quy co-hosted along with host Dan Forbes.

Quy, who spent 24 years as an FBI agent, provided some of her insights on the topic of failure and how it is important to fail.  You can read her full article by clicking here, but here are her 5 reasons that may just change the way you look at failure:

1. Failure Develops Persistence
2. Failure Builds Mental Toughness
3. Failure Defines Willpower
4. Failure Makes You Smarter
5. Failure Raises Curiosity

In short, Quy describes two types of failure. One is the result of not doing something because it pushes us outside of our comfort zone and the other comes from actually doing something outside of our comfort zone.

My big takeaway from the hangout conversation was not from failure itself, but from how we deal with it.  Let me ask you a question … How would you explain the difference between an optimist and a positive thinker?

Before yesterday, I would have probably said they were basically the same thing.  Not! I didn’t take the time to actually see what Webster says about optimism or what “positive” thinking might actually mean because I don’t care.

What I do care about is that I now have a new way of thinking about how I look at failure.  We have all heard the old phrase, “It’s not whether win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”  I have a different spin on that timeless quote.

“It’s not whether you fail or succeed, it’s what you learn from the experience that will make a difference moving forward.”

We will all fail and even though some failures are catastrophic, most are simply an opportunity for a lesson learned.  Go back and look at Quy’s five – is this how you are using failure or are you letting those failures beat you down and hold you back?

“If you are not messing up every once and a while, you are not doing anything.”  –  Robert L. Woods

Woods, one of the wisest men I have ever known, made this statement to me about 30 years ago and I can honestly tell you that hardly a week goes by when I do not think of those words.  I would much rather fail from taking action, by stepping outside my comfort zone, than failing as a result of living a complacent life.

Back to the optimism vs. positive thinking issue.  Try this on for size … Optimists go through life believing that things will get better, that somehow things always work out. Positive thinkers actually do something to make things work out.  I believe there is a huge difference between these two types of people.

So the way I see it, we have three ways we can deal with failure:

• Let it beat us down and hold us back
• Accept that it is simply a way of life and move on, or
• Embrace the lessons learned within that failure and use them to accomplish some of the ideas that Quy has provided

I will put a little spin on what another colleague of mine, Dave Moore, said during the hangout.  An optimist will consider the glass half full, a pessimist will consider it half empty, but the positive thinker will drink it while the other two are discussing it.

So my question today, “When it comes to failure, are you a pessimist, optimist or a positive thinker?”  Your answer may just make failure your new friend.

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Barry Smith    5/31/13   photo by author   © Building What Matters 2013