Growth Not Failure: Wisdom from J.K. Rowling and Dale Carnegie to Transform Your Mindset

You’re Not Failing—You’re Growing! Powerful Mindset Shifts from J.K. Rowling and Dale Carnegie Everyone Can Use

WE’RE conditioned to fear failure. What if I fail?… I can’t fail this time… Failure is seen as a fatal mistake — whether to a relationship, a career, or a decision we’ve made. But failure is a lot more than that. It’s what grows resilience, inspiration, creativity, and success. It’s how we approach failure that makes a difference. I’ve seen my therapy patients take another look at a failure and realize it gave them room to grow. And there are two examples we can follow — from the author J.K. Rowling and self-improvement and leadership pioneer Dale Carnegie. While wildly different people on the surface, they shared a powerful sense of determination and overall resilience. How each approached failure contains lessons for us all.

J.K. Rowling: Learning from Adversity

It’s likely you’ve heard of the Harry Potter books and movies. But renowned author J.K. Rowling hardly started out as an overnight success. She was an unemployed single mother wrestling with depression when she discovered an escape — writing. She conjured up a world of wizards and witches, a place where her creative spirit could find solace and hope amidst the chaos of life. Her manuscript got rejection after rejection. But she persisted. Finally, Bloomsbury Publishing took a chance — and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone became an incredible phenomenon.

The lesson we can take from J.K. Rowling is this: Instead of letting failure define her, she persevered — and turned failure into a personal victory. She refused to be pigeonholed by society’s rigid definition of achievement and shallow markers of success. What she found instead was that real success came from within — and failures and adversity were meant to be embraced, viewed as valuable lessons, and part of developing a powerful resilience.

Dale Carnegie: Success Comes from Failure

Twentieth-century self-improvement and sales guru Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People back in 1936. It was a runaway bestseller and remains a classic to this day. But Carnegie didn’t just set out to write a book and make his mark: he failed at countless endeavors first. Instead of brushing past them, he did the opposite: he wrote them down and kept them in a folder. He took a hard look and confronted his own shortcomings head-on.

Here’s the lesson: By digging into his failures, Carnegie found invaluable lessons. He came to understand that setbacks were like an elixir for personal growth and self-discovery. He saw failures like his best buddies, always ready to teach him a thing or two. He cultivated a can-do spirit that enabled people to tackle challenges and overcome obstacles — and build a methodology from it that has had a profound influence on millions of people. So much for being afraid to fail. Once you know it’s an opportunity, you can learn from it.

Your Turn: Four Mindset Shifts

To use failure to achieve your own greatness, make these four simple but powerful mindset shifts:

Make the Choice: Failure is like a boot camp for resilience, a grueling training ground that prepares us for life’s inevitable challenges. When it knocks us down, we face a pivotal choice: stay on the ground and wallow in defeat, or bounce back like we’re on a trampoline, ready to soar again. This choice is crucial: each time we pick ourselves up, we build mental and emotional muscles that equip us for future struggles. It’s a reminder that while setbacks can sting, they also offer us the chance to rise stronger and more determined than before.

Get Creative: When our grand plans go belly-up, we’re often left scrambling for alternatives, which sparks our creativity like nothing else. This is the moment to ditch the beaten path, think outside the box, and try unconventional solutions. Some of history’s coolest inventions and groundbreaking discoveries emerged precisely because someone was willing to pivot and innovate after a failure. It’s amazing how necessity can lead to creativity. When faced with obstacles, we often tap into reservoirs of ingenuity we didn’t even know we had. So, the next time things go awry, embrace the chaos and let your imagination run wild!

Shift Your Focus: Failure also serves as a powerful catalyst for developing a growth mindset. Instead of fixating on specific outcomes, we begin to shift our focus toward continuous improvement and personal development. This transformative perspective allows us to view failures not as endpoints but as valuable stepping stones on our journey. Setbacks become opportunities for learning, helping us build resilience and adaptability. It’s this growth-oriented mindset that enables us to conquer mountains as we learn to embrace challenges and find strength in the process rather than solely in the results.

Be Humbled: Failure has a unique way of building character and humbling us. It’s a reality check that reminds us we’re not invincible superheroes — though let’s be honest, that would be pretty cool. It teaches us that everyone stumbles and that vulnerability is part of the human experience. This humbling journey helps us cultivate empathy and compassion for others, reinforcing the idea that we’re all in this together. Instead of placing ourselves on pedestals, we learn to appreciate the shared struggle of growth and resilience, which ultimately fosters deeper connections with those around us.

Failure teaches us empathy and compassion for others facing their own failures. It forces us to question what truly matters to us and what success really means. It’s like a soul-searching journey that leads to personal growth and a more authentic and meaningful life.

But here’s the catch — just experiencing failure won’t automatically make you a better person. You must be intentional about it. Embrace failure with open arms, reflect on its lessons, and take action. Only then will you truly transform setbacks into stepping stones to success.

Shawn Léon Nowotnik, MSW, LCSW, is an artist, author, filmmaker, and therapist living outside Chicago. After losing his son to suicide, he was compelled to reevaluate his own narrative — and look at how loss, mental health, and addiction can affect every aspect of a person’s life. He’s developed holistic treatment programs and advocates for improved mental health and addiction disorder treatments, as well as researching, writing, and public speaking about addiction, community, mental health, narrative, and social issues. His new book is F*ck Happiness: The Search for Meaning in a World Gone Mad Chasing Happiness. Learn more at shawnleonnowotnik.com

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:36 AM

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