Dealing with Failure to Ensure Success
“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
That is a quote by J.K. Rowlings.
Failure is just another word for an obstacle. It is nothing new that we all know how our educational systems have measured us from the day we left home to be eased into the school systems. From kindergarten to institutions of higher education.
We all know about choices. Sometimes choices are not autonomous.
Many people around us have a say in what we choose or the luck of it. Our parents, our teachers, and even our peers. We want to fit in or please people around us, so we are sometimes driven to make choices that go against what’s really right for us. This can mean the difference between success and failure.
what is Failure?
Because of the way our school systems have chosen to look at failure and success, we have also learned to look at failure as a very negative aspect of a learning situation. Nobody has ever been successful without the taste of failure. If you do not fail, then you are not pushing the envelope or rather you are not trying anything outside your comfort zone.
Failure should be seen as a way of asking you to take a breath and re-evaluate the situation. A time to ask yourself whether you should do the same thing differently or change your direction altogether.
Failure can lead to stress, low self-esteem, and even some serious mental health problems for some people.
Usually, it is because of expectations… either our own or our social environment. If you experience this unhealthy way of looking at failure, you should understand that you are far from the only one.
Can you change the way you look at failure and turn it into success?
People who are successful in what they do, do not let failure be a defining factor in how they move forward. They look at failure as a time to do the following things.
- Stop and evaluate
- rethink your strategy
- change your direction
- improve on what you were doing
- make sure you aren’t taking unnecessary steps (trim)
- ask for help if you are stuck
- A plan is just that… it can be changed
- Work autonomously… listen to advice but make the choices.
Successful people never look at failure as a negative state of disappointment.
So… what do you do if you are at a point where you haven’t learned how to trust your judgment and have ended up losing your confidence and do not trust your capabilities?
Sometimes it takes two to get out of a bad spiral of negative self-talk. A quick way to do this is NLP where you do not even have to know why you do what you do, but guidance can get your subconscious mind to change how you tackle failure and have more confidence even through anything that doesn’t go your way. I always do some Life Coaching with my sessions, where needed.
In a Havard commencement speech, Oprah said…
“There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”
There is no better time than today to do better.
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