Embrace Setbacks Expect Victory
Fail It to Nail It Episode 2 ft. Ryan Roberts
Listen to the Episode Here
Topics discussed in this episode
Ryan’s academic and career journey
Ryan’s views on failure, success and growth
Ryan’s experience with personal failures
Ryan’s experience working with clients
Ryan’s advice to those wanting to work on embracing failure and growth
Episode Summary
Ryan Roberts and myself, Lindsey Roberts, are the hosts of Fail It to Nail It. Today, I had the opportunity to interview Ryan about his experience with failure and success, both in his personal and professional life. Ryan is a clinical mental health counselor as well as business owner of a company called Level-Up Life. His passion is working with teens and young adults in crisis, and helping to merge the academic world and the mental health world together.
The Journey to Becoming a Therapist
In this episode, Ryan shares what led him to choosing his therapeutic career path. He had an experience when he was young and attending a private school where a classmate and friend told him that he would be a good therapist one day. Ryan knew that he wanted to serve people, but he hadn’t considered therapy until that moment, but after that he never looked back. After that experience, he tried to get any job that he could that would allow him to get experience serving people in different ways. He worked in tutoring programs, treatment and residential programs, and took every opportunity outside of work as well to hone his skills. One opportunity that he had working as an academic director at a treatment center opened his eyes to the need for academic support after the students graduated from treatment. He had multiple parents calling him after their child went home because they were struggling to apply the skills they learned in treatment into an academic setting. They asked Ryan if he could continue to mentor their kids remotely to help them transition to college. That is why he started his own business supporting students through executive functioning coaching and mentoring. He knew that these kids needed more than just tutoring support, as the struggles they were experiencing weren’t always about academics, rather they were experiencing relationship struggles, the inability to manage stress and anxiety, learning disabilities and mental health struggles, and the symptoms of these struggles presented themselves academically. He wanted to provide a well-rounded service to these families to address the root cause of the problem, rather than just the surface symptoms.
Turning Failure into Opportunity
Ryan talked about his personal stories and experiences with facing obstacles and failure, by first sharing what it was like for him to transition from a private school to a public one. It was really difficult to go from a small classroom where he had known everyone in the class since he was in kindergarten, to going to public school where he didn’t know anyone. He learned that he hadn’t developed the social skills to interact with people he didn’t know, and he realized that his efforts to connect with people sometimes worked, but other times he ended up pushing people away. Despite these setbacks, through trial and error, effort, and never giving up despite discomfort and rejection, he developed those essential social skills and was able to make connections with a lot of people. He went to college, and though he struggled with grades and attendance due to chronic pain and ADHD, he was still able to make connections with students and professors which lead to research and leadership opportunities that allowed him to apply for and get into one of the top schools in mental health counseling. This experience underscores Ryan's belief that many positive outcomes arise from failures and setbacks.
How Did Ryan push through failure
Ryan isn’t entirely sure how he was able to embrace failure and push through all of his setbacks in high school and college where others might have given up, but one of his theories was his focus on service to others. He explains that serving others helps you to be less self-defeating, push past the “fight or flight” response which can lead to feeling strong negative emotions really quickly. He mentions that this might not be helpful for everyone, and he wouldn't recommend it as a strategy to push through failure for everyone either. That being said, he went on to explain how he was able to define what success looks like for him. For many people, success is vague and not clearly defined. For example, success for one person could be graduating high school without understanding what that means to them, or how they want to feel in the future or who they want to grow to become. For Ryan, he knew that he needed to get into a masters program to become a licensed therapist, but he knew that there wasn’t just one path to get there. He had a lot of things working against him, so he decided to take a different path than most might take in his situation. He was flexible in his failures and successes, which allowed to make a lot of mistakes because he knew that there wasn’t just one path to success. For some people, any mistakes and failures can be devastating, but for him, mistakes were opportunities for growth.
Helping Others Embrace Failure
Ryan helps clients and individuals embrace failure as a necessary step towards success. He starts by identifying what are some things that are important and exciting to his clients. When people start thinking about excitement, they are able to generate emotional resources to help them face inner conflict when making decisions. This creates opportunities for people to be willing to approach life as an experiment, and when they are experimenting they are almost always guaranteed to fail. This also helps them to not attribute their failures to their own concept of self, and instead attribute it to just part of the process of growth.
Ryan shared two examples of working with clients that took different approaches to dealing with failure in their life. The first example was of a student who was so anxious in social settings, and he knew that he needed help. He thought that his social anxiety stemmed from knowing that other people were going to judge him unless he was dressed well, came across well, that he was funny, etc. So, his approach was to focus on improving his wardrobe, practicing social skills, and practicing being funny so that he was prepared for social situations, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough. He could practice all he wanted, but he wasn’t willing to experiment because there was a risk that he would fail and be rejected. He wasn’t willing to face the price of failure in order to succeed, and he really struggled to put into practice all of the skills he was learning. Another client, on the other hand, really struggled with his self-confidence because he had been told a lot by family members that he wasn’t competent. He decided to take things into his own hands and try to get a sales job, knowing that he was going to have to fail in order to succeed, and he did great! He didn’t grow because he tried to avoid failure, he grew because he embraced failure and pushed past it.
There are many paths to success. If you fail on one path, find the next path and the next until you find one that takes you to where you want to go.
