Failure is not an option, it’s a fact of life. The challenge, of course, is how the inevitable is faced. J. D. Roth, of Get Rich Slowly, recently put together a piece called Failure is Okay, which examines how successful people move forward when things don’t go as planned. It might seem odd to reference a personal finance site, but personal finance is more mental than fiscal and the lessons learned in that arena apply broadly.

Don’t buy that? Well, tell me this related post of his doesn’t sound like it came straight from a martial arts blog: How to Build Confidence and Destroy Fear.

In fact, J. D.’s failure post derives largely from John C. Maxwell’s Failing Forward, a book about success in all fields, not just finance, and here’s J. D.’s summary of the principles put forward by Maxwell:

1. Reject rejection. Successful people don’t blame themselves when they fail. They take responsibility for each setback, but they don’t take the failure personally.

2. View failure as temporary. “People who personalize failure see a problem as a hole they’re permanently stuck in,” writes Maxwell. “But achievers see any predicament as temporary.”

3. View each failure as an isolated incident. Successful people don’t define themselves by individual failures. They recognize that each setback is a small part of the whole.

4. Have realistic expectations. This one is huge. Too many people start big projects — such as paying off their debt — with the unrealistic expectation that they’ll see immediate results. Success takes time. When you pursue anything worthwhile, there are going to be bumps along the way. And remember: The perfect is the enemy of the good.

5. Focus on strengths. This was one of the biggest lessons I took away from Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. When I interviewed Ferriss last year, I asked him to expand on this idea. He told me: “Focus on leveraging and amplifying your strengths, which allows you to multiply your results. Fix any fatal weaknesses to the extent that they prevent you from reaching your goals, but perfection isn’t the path to your objectives; finding ways to cater to your strengths is.”

6. Vary approaches. “Achievers are willing to vary their approaches to problems,” Maxwell writes. “That’s important in every walk of life, not just business.” If one approach doesn’t work for you, if it brings repeated failure, then try something else. Maxwell is saying that to fail forward, you must do what works for you, not necessarily what works for other people.

7. Bounce back. Finally, successful people are resilient. They don’t let one error keep them down. They learn from their mistakes and move on.

Check out the full post: I think it’s a mental pick-me-up of the kind we all need occasionally. I don’t know if achieving a more positive outlook can be learned or is something innate, and I further don’t know how much reading an essay of this sort can help anyone with the inevitable failures we all face, but I figure reading something like this once in awhile can’t hurt.