What Are Your Failure Plans?

One of the biggest reasons we fail to develop good habits is because they take time. But another subtle reason is that we don’t plan for what happens when we fail. When people don’t have guidelines on what to do when the original plan didn’t work, we pass off learning the good habits as they weren’t meant to be.

By setting up a plan for what to do if the original plan fails, we take away excuses. Without the plan, we would simply pass it off as trying. With a failure plan, we now have exact steps to take.

One question you may be asking yourself is how do you come up with a failure plan? Try to find others who have gone through the process of developing the habit you are trying to develop yourself. Ask them if they were successful in developing the habit and if they hit any roadblocks along the way. Ask what they did to overcome those roadblocks. That, in essence, becomes your failure plan.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep those same people in the loop as far as your progress. They can act as a kind of support group and can serve to keep you on track. This not only helps you achieve your desired results but it has the potential to build up some friendships as well.

Too many people look at failure as a losing entity when in fact it should be looked upon as the opposite. If you peel back the layers of experience of many successful people, you will see those layers filled with failures. It’s how they handled those failures that led to their success. It’s what you do with the failures that define whether you will eventually succeed. The only surefire way to truly fail is to give up completely.

You may also wonder what happens if the failure plan doesn’t work out. There is nothing stopping you from having multiple failure plans in the event one of them didn’t help you achieve the results you were looking for. Having multiple alternate plans will give you the confidence that you can succeed and will show you that you are committed to doing so. This greatly increases the chances of success because failure is no longer an end game, it’s a new starting point.

Any plans you do come up with, write and print them out. Refer to them whenever you are trying to accomplish what’s on those plans.