Life is unpredictable.Sometimes things take a completely unexpected course that defies all expectations and results in failure.

In such situations all our strategic planning comes to naught and we are left perplexed and, quite often, desperate. What did we do wrong?

What if, after a lot of introspection, you find that there were no flaws in the way you approached and executed your task?

These are questions that will haunt you, more so because the answer is extremely hard, if at all possible, to arrive at.

How do you overcome these apparent failures? The key is in understanding that these so called failures are as important, if not more, in our progress in life, as are our successes.

Failures are essential, but, given human nature, not the easiest thing to get over. And while we are never going to get around to actually enjoying the process of failing, there are a few things we can do to appreciate the positives that arise from a failure.

1 Always remember that there are multiple ways to perform a task. We pick one based on our understanding of the task, our skills and experience, and our planning. Most of the time, applying our knowledge and planning efficiently will ensure we pick the most optimal path, but it is important to remember, that at the end of the day, it is a choice based on limited information and prone to rapidly evolving external, environmental factors. It can go wrong! When it does, it is important to remember that there were multiple ways from which you picked one. Which means that there are other ways to handle the task. It is far from the end of the road. Go back and revisit those options given the new experience and information available with you.

If, for some reason, you believe that experimenting with different approaches signifies that you don't have a focused plan of work, please put your work down for now and spend some time getting rid of that notion!

There cannot be anything more detrimental to your overall progress and growth as an individual. Read about any of the great inventors and thinkers that the world has known and you will realize that the one consistent lesson that most, if not all of them, thought necessary to pass on, is the virtue of experimenting and failing.

Success never comes knocking with an 'Instruction Manual' in hand. It takes planning, persistence and failures - failures which are the cause for the eventual success.

2 It is in our nature to be impatient.

Everyone wants to complete a task at one go. But that rarely works. Break your task down into smaller, simpler units.

Prioritize and take on the smaller tasks one at a time. Just doing this will ensure that you are able to track and manage your progress much more efficiently.

You will be able to quickly identify which part of your overall approach did not work or yield the expected results and rectify that specific aspect of your work.

Compare this with the situation wherein you attempted the task as a whole, spent a lot of time working with the wrong approach, did not achieve the desired result, once again spent a whole lot of time trying to analyze where exactly you went wrong, and finally started once again from scratch.

3 Finally, understand that failures are necessary.

They are a part and parcel of our lives and can be a great learning tool if we handle them wisely.

Most management gurus, including Tom Peters, have for long been advocating that organizations need to encourage their employees to fail and should reward these failures that arise not out of bad planning or bad execution, but by virtue of evolving circumstances and the effort to find improved, more efficient solutions.

If you don't find yourself reaping any rewards for these failures, reward yourself - you've just learnt something no book can teach you and you may have just started on the path to discovering something new.

Like one the brightest minds the world has known, Thomas Alva Edison once said, "Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work."