Reframing failure can be the difference between beating yourself up and moving forward with clarity. In this solo reflection, April Shprintz shares a personal story sparked by a rare winter freeze in Florida and the flowering plants she tried so hard to protect. What seems like a small setback opens into a deeper conversation about control, responsibility, and the way our inner dialogue shifts when something matters to us and doesn’t go as planned. April walks through how she reframed the moment in real time, why comparison can sometimes be grounding rather than dismissive, and how resilience is often built through experiences we didn’t choose. This episode is a gentle reminder that doing your best really does count, and that failure is often working for you, even when it doesn’t feel that way yet.
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Reframing A Failure
Surviving The Unexpected: How A Freeze Became A Life Lesson
I am so glad you’re here. No matter where you are in the US, you have probably been freezing your absolute ass off because we have had some crazy weather. It’s been a really great example of how to reframe a failure for me. If you are a regular reader, you know that I got all into making my yard really beautiful, have a gardener who’s helping me, and gorgeous flowering plants. It’s the middle of winter in Florida, but normally, that’s 75 to 80 degrees and everything just was so beautiful. When it came time for that freeze, everybody here is freaking out because it’s going to kill all the plants.
You cannot control everything; just do the best you can and see what happens. Share on XWe don’t exactly know how to handle it, but we did our best and we covered them and did the things that folks who live in colder areas of the world probably already know how to do or they don’t have blooming plants right at that time. Now, for me, this was an exercise in I cannot control everything, I can just do the best I can and we’ll see what happens because I was very nervous for all my little flowering plants. I feel very responsible and nurturing towards them. It’s weird, but it’s just who I am. I feel like I’m a plant mama. A dog mama and a plant mama. Not on my watch. Did everything I could to fix them and get them handled.
Interrupting Negative Self-Talk After A Failure
We had a two-day freeze, a pretty serious freeze, and I noticed after the second day that most of them, although they might not be dead dead, look dead. I was really sad. However, I also noticed that all over the city, all of the plants that were flowering like that looked dead. I told myself, “You’ve done the best you absolutely could, that’s all you can ask of yourself.” As you know, when you fail at something that’s important to you, that self-talk can get pretty nasty and it can be tougher to keep your mindset in a great place. I’m going to help you with something as silly as some flowering plants, just see how you can work to get your mind in a much better place.
Finding The Silver Lining: Resilience In Small And Big Things
I started telling myself different things. Number one, I tried really hard. I bought extra things, covered them, took great care to keep them safe and even though it didn’t work, there wasn’t anything else I could have done. I used the proof that much more expensive homes and places and people with even more resources than I have also had those dead plants. You did have that feeling of, “I did everything I could do.” At that point, you’re ready to reframe and start talking about how it might even be a good thing that this happened. Now one, if these plants happen to live, they’re going to be far more resilient because any plant that survives a freeze is doing much better.
It's much easier to learn from somebody else's failure than it can be to learn from your own. Share on XThat’s like all of us. When we survive something that was really hard, we become an even more resilient plant. Even if they don’t, here’s the thing. I have a gardener who would get extra work from it. There’ll be gardeners all over the city who get extra work replanting flowers, making things beautiful etc. That’s another way that it could be working out for other people. In addition, we’re all going to appreciate these flowers so much more once we’ve gone through this process of losing them and not having them. Whereas before, as beautiful and lush and gorgeous as it can be in South Florida, you can have this amazing view and it one day just becomes your view.
Reframing Failure In Life: Mindset, Perspective, And Growth
Be careful if you’re doing that with your partner, because sometimes we do that in our relationships even more than in our surroundings. Even though this was a failure and something that I could have taken very personally or been very hard on myself, and again, this may seem like a very small thing to someone, but think about how many times when you fail in what is seemingly a small way and other people don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal to you. It’s much easier to learn from somebody else’s failure or somebody else’s freak out than it can be to learn from your own because you’re not as emotionally vested and you can think more clearly and really start to apply these tips and techniques to your own life.
As a reminder, when failures and these things happen, first, reach for those things that will make you feel a little better, even if it’s, “Look, a whole bunch of other people failed at this too.” Try to find out ways that this could be happening for you, not to you, because I guarantee you, in some way, shape and form it is working out for you. Even if, like me, you just decide, “That was a fluke. We never have a freeze. I’m not going to worry about things I can’t control.” Here’s to your success.
