Hello! My name is Jordan Thibodeau.
I have partnered with my friend Joe Ternasky to write this class on how to bounce back from failure. Joe and I have both worked for several Fortune 500 tech companies and have built pretty comfortable lives for ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we’ve never failed. In fact, Joe and I have both dealt with our fair share of failures, and yet we were able to overcome those obstacles and effectively apply what we learned to our lives moving forward. Now, Joe and I want to use this course to share a few of the specific strategies that have contributed to our success. Specifically, strategies for handling and benefiting from failure.
In my first two courses, I focused on building a better network and improving your conversational skills. This course is about utilizing your failure to become more successful in life. It will teach you the skills to improve how you react, think about, and learn from failure. Think of this course as a first aid kit that not only helps you triage your failure in the short term, but also helps you resolve the long-term effects of failure, such as shame, guilt, and regret.
Make sure to click “Next Lesson” at the end of each lesson so it is marked as complete. Once you read all the lessons and complete the final quiz at the bottom of the last lesson, you will receive a course certificate that will appear in your course dashboard.
The Flavors of Failure
Failure comes in many different forms: a failed project, an abandoned goal, a broken relationship, a bad investment. To keep our definition straightforward, I will define failure as a setback of any kind. This generally includes any professional, personal, or family events that push you farther away from your goals. The problem many of us face is that we often interpret a simple, recoverable setback as a game-ending, total failure, which leads us to give up altogether.
We all have to face our own setbacks, but we don’t have to face them alone. I originally wanted to write this course as a distillation of the techniques that I used to recover from the academic failure I faced in high school. When I was a teenager, I was provided with a golden opportunity to attend a premiere private American high school called Bellarmine with a full scholarship. This would have set me on a course to network with some of the most influential people in the country and secure a comfortable life for myself and my family. But life had other plans. Just a short time into my high school career, my mother passed away, and my family life was thrown into chaos. This upheaval negatively impacted my studies, and I wound up flunking out of not just this high school, but one other as well.
If I could go back and share one thing with my teenage self, this class would be it. These lessons are packed with advice that would have changed the course of my life. But I had to learn my lessons the hard way: through years of struggle, mind-numbing effort, and hard work, followed up by a whole lot of soul-searching. Since you are here reading this, I am guessing that you can relate in some way. My hope is that by completing this course, you will become better-equipped to face even the worst of the challenges life has to offer and emerge a better person on the other side.
“Why do you and Joe care so much?” you may ask. To be honest, part of the reason we care so much is that we are counting on you to realize your astounding potential. We need you to know that even though you may have failed, that failure is not the end, and it might not even be a failure in the grand scheme of things. You have the ability to learn from this experience and achieve far greater things in your life because of it. In a way, the situation you may find yourself in has actually provided you with a natural well of wisdom that you can tap into to revitalize all of society. Your family, your friends, and your community all need you to learn how to harness your failures, pick yourself back up, brush yourself off, and climb back into the game with your efforts redoubled. We are all rooting for you to succeed because we are also players in this game, and it turns out that we are playing for the same team.
About This Class
This isn’t a passive class. You will be expected to follow along with the lessons and take advantage of the techniques and tools provided within, in order to honestly reflect upon your failures, mistakes, or shortcomings. If you don’t take the time to consider the lessons in this course, then you will miss out on some great opportunities to improve your ability to handle failure. That being said, not every tool in this course will be a perfect fit for you. What we ask is that you experiment with everything at least once and allow yourself to suspend your doubts for the duration of this course. You may find that some tools you don’t expect to help you will actually be the key to unlocking your unique way of dealing with failure.
This course will teach you how to do the following skills:
- Examine failure objectively
- Avoid panicking in the midst of failure
- Contextualize failure within the narrative of your life
- Recognize what you can and cannot control about failure
- Improve your reactions to stressful situations
- Utilize the support of friends and family to overcome failure
- Use the 10-10-10 Rule to look at your failure in a broader perspective
- Prevent shame from holding you back in life
- Discover and eliminate your self-limiting beliefs
- Detect and move past failed relationships
- Healthily embrace all aspects of your life
One Last, Important Note
It can be painful to think honestly about failure. Before we begin, please be aware that this course will speak about failure in a stark, matter-of-fact way that can be difficult to hear. But that doesn’t mean that Joe or I feel any less empathetic for anyone’s struggles. If you are considering physically hurting yourself or others, then I implore you to please seek help from a professional, reach out to a loved one, or contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
Now, let’s get started!
Make sure to click “Next Lesson” at the end of each lesson so it is marked as complete. Once you read all the lessons and complete the final quiz, you will receive a course certificate that will appear in your course dashboard.
