Ok, this is going to get quite personal. I’m going to spend the next 7 posts going over some of my failures and I’ll be sharing different ways to deal with the thing we all experience: FAILURE.

The first one: I invited myself to give a talk at an event here in Amsterdam, a couple of months ago. I was really looking forward to it, I felt prepared and I almost felt like a big deal. 2 minutes before my presentation, the room was still empty. The first person to come in was the lady that would announce me. Just in time, a handful of people came in. I regretted coming out there, but finished my presentation anyway.

My expectations of this talk were high, but it didn’t go as planned. My topic, employer and my name itself didn’t attract as much people as I thought it would do. I felt ashamed and a little bit defeated when I walked on stage.

The first strategy for dealing with stuff like this: acknowledge what you feel and accept what happened. It is OK to have the feeling that you failed, but you can’t change it anymore. It is in the past. It is something that will be a part of you forever, so you’ll better get used to it as quickly as you can.

As soon as I accepted that my presentation didn’t go as planned, that I had the wrong expectations and that I couldn’t change it anymore, I could put this one behind me and I could start looking towards the future.