How to deal with failure?

We all have our bad days and good days. Sometimes during the bad days, we feel that we are useless and the feeling of failure creeps in. There are many reasons why you might like a failure such as low self-esteem, making comparisons with people, and unrealistic expectations, or we didn’t get what you want. Dealing with such strong emotions such as feeling like a failure depends on one individual to another. Some people use failure as a way to grow and learn from it to get better and some do not.

I have noticed that our society stigmatizes failure and that is why it is difficult for us sometimes to cope with failure or even see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. The truth is there is nothing wrong with failure and failure is never the end of the road for our journey.

For those who are struggling to overcome failure, I have few strategies that you can use to help you cope with failure and will help you rise above it all and achieve success.  

1-         Accept your emotions. 

When you feel that you have failed or have the feeling of being a failure. It is important that you recognize and accept those feelings. Do not try to eliminate those feelings but try to understand why you are feeling like that. Acknowledge your feelings and what has happened. You may feel embarrassment, anxiety, or even shame and sadness. But that is okay. Those feeling may be uncomfortable however you need to recognize those feelings. Accept them instead of trying to escape. It is important that you allow yourself to feel bad and cry if you need to. Understand that it is unhealthy not recognizing and accepting your emotions. Don’t distract yourself from the feelings. When you go through the feelings you will feel relief and you will be able to let go and move on. You can even call a friend and have a deep talk about your feeling or what has happened that made you feel like a failure. It is important that you find a healthy way to deal with your emotions when you feel bad. 

2-         See failure from a different perspective 

You can think of failure as a great teacher that you can learn from it. you can also think that failure is an opportunity for you to do things differently. Be open to learning and growing your personality. Have a plan for what you need to do next time. This will help you to gain the experience that you need, and you will get better with practice. Do not worry about people’s opinions or views about your failure. You cannot control people around you and how they think. However, you control yourself and how you deal with the situation, and how you feel. Accept that success is not defined by failure. Think of failure as a way to improve yourself and get better. 

3-         Accept responsibility

When you feel like a failure it is easy to shift the blame to somebody else in order to feel better temporarily. That is not a healthy way of dealing with strong emotions like a failure. When you recognize the feeling of failure it is important that you do not take it personally. However, you need to look at it differently and analyze the feelings. Analyze what went wrong and how did you contribute to the issue, and be honest about it. Once you accept some level of responsibility for your failure you will be able to take the correct actions toward the failure. On the other hand, you won’t be blaming people for the unfortunate circumstances on your behalf. When you think about failure you want to look for explanations and not excuses. Identify what you need to do and what went wrong. You will be able then to think about what you can do differently next time. Accept any mistakes that you made and focus on learning from them and moving on. 

4-         Realistic expectations 

Sometimes we feel like a failure because we set unrealistic expectations for what we want to achieve or what we want to get. Unrealistic expectations rise when there is a challenging situation, and we tend to deal with it poorly. Continuously failing to meet your expectations will make feel disappointed, sad and feel like a failure. Also, expecting more from other people is another road to failure. You will lose relationships and lose faith in people around you if you set unrealistic expectations. On the other hand, setting realistic expectations will expend your effort and you will see progress as you will meet the expected results. Setting realistic expectations with other people won’t make you feel irritated and stressed out from other people. You will build relationships instead.

5-         Don’t dwell on it 

Thinking and talking about your failure over and over again will not change the outcome. In fact, the more you dwell on your failure the more you will be trapped in your negative thinking, and you will not move on. The faster you take a healthy step in dealing with your failure the better it is and the faster you will be able to take positive action moving forward. What to do when you dwell on the failure? well, you can do different things. For example, you can start by going out for walks, breathing exercises or take a bath, or even exercise to get your heartbeat up and your blood flowing. Have a healthy strategy plan when you feel that you are dwelling on the failure and decide how you want to handle it. it is important to avoid bad habits and focus on learning and healing yourself.

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