My Life Did a 180 After I Learned These Things About Failure
Failures are horrible. I’ve been dealing with them my entire life. If I’m being honest, the first 22 years of my life were filled with back to back failures. A new failure would hit the moment the heat from the previous one subsided.
You get the picture, right?
But that changed one year, and it wasn’t because of god finally taking pity on me. I learned something that helped me make the change.
Here, I’ll share with you what I learned so that you can try it out.
1. Failure isn’t the end.
Although it feels like your life is ruined everytime you fail, reality can’t be farther from it. A single failure or, even, many failures won’t destroy your life. Your failure will utmost lead to a major turn of events.
Know that you’re holding the stearing of your life. You can turn the car around anytime you want; It’s just a decision away.
Get rid of the notion that everything is over after you fail. In reality, its the beginning of something new. Another chance to do what you love.
2. Emotions over practicality.
It’s natural to experience a heavy flow of emotions after a failure, and so is it normal to be weighed down by them. But when that happens, it’s best to ride the wave of feelings.
Often, we make the mistake of planning something and taking new resolutions while we’re still hung over the lose. When we do that we’re prone to lose concentration and get distracted.
So, give yourself time to recover. Cry for hours, if that helps. Go on a trip, if that’s effective. Or eat till your tummy aches. Do whatever that will get you back on track.
3. No one else is responsible.
Humans are selfish and, often, don’t take the responsibility of their own actions, especially when they’re wrong. To recover quicker, they choose the cowards way out — blame another person.
However, holding someone else accountable for your mistake won’t help you win the next time because the reason why you failed is still lurking in the shadows.
4. Get back to your normal self.
After all the emotional effects of the failure has worn off, you’ll start to feel like yourself again. You’ll start to find your hobbies interesting, gain empathy towards yourself, and take delight in life again.
It’s during this time that your brain is fit to do the work that you were postponing — analyze the failure.
5. Find out why you lost.
This is the core of failure- Identifying why you lost.
Say you lost a chess match because of physical discomfort. Maybe your chair was troubling your back or the loud construction noise was distracting. Whatever the reason, you lost because of a chair and noise, and realizing that is crucial.
You’ll see why.
6. Eliminate the reason
Something you must have already figured out by yourself is that you’ll continue to fail till you eliminate the reason.
You’ll lose the chess match again if your chair is still causing back ache and the construction noise is making thinking clearly difficult. To avoid a failure again, you’ll have to find another chair and use a noise cancellor. Its a no-brainer.
Once you identify the reason for your lose, you can easily rectify the issue and try again. However, things can be a little tricky when there seems to be more than one reason, like the above example where there were two reasons. In the case, you’ll have to analyze the failure in detail and identify all the reasons.
7. Attach positive feelings with failure
Failing often brings about sadness, dissapointment, and anger — which is understandable. However, why should the memory of a failure have the same impact?
I still feel dejected when I recollect my first break up. But it was because of that break up that I understood my self-esteem issues and the false idea of life I had perpetuated in my mind.
Instead, don’t you think I should feel proud of overcoming the grief, building my self-esteem, and becoming realistic? By doing so, I build a more positive approach towards life, which is way better than being whiny.
8. Stop comparing failures
People grow at their own pace. You probably struggle to start something your friend does in an hour. Similarly, your friend might lag behind in some other forte.
In other words, not everyone likes a particular cup of tea.
Every person is just average till they discover their talent. To put it simply, we all are so different that it’s unjust and silly to even compare achievements or failures.
Not only is comparing a waste of time, it’s demotivating. In fact, the effect of putting a person down like that could destroy their potential.
9. You’re going to fail again.
Now, this is a dose of reality.
You’re going to fail again. Afterall, we’re just human, and like someone once said to fail is humane, to try is divine.
(slightly modified to fit the context)
Don’t get me wrong. I am not discouraging you. What I am trying to say is you’ll fail somewhere because you’re simply human.
For example, I intended to cover 10 points in this article when I started but as I reached the end, I realized I didn’t have anything more to say. I could easily consider it a failure. But I choose not to. Instead, I’m going to re-read this and edit it, and if needed, reduce another point. Afterall quality over number (edited to fit the context).
So stop counting your failures, and instead, celebrate your victories.
Did you like the lessons I learned about failure? Try implementing them in your life and let me know if noticed any change.
Also, I’m a new on Medium. Please follow me for similar insightful stories!
