We are all going to face painful failures when we desperately don’t want to.
No matter who you are, no matter how much money you have behind you, and no matter how many times you’ve done it before, you will face failures. It is just a part of life.
The trick to success is to turn your failures into life changing lessons by understanding what went wrong and how you could do better next time. Failure is a crucial part of success and it’s something that must be overcome if you want to achieve anything in life.
You Have to Feel the Pain of your Failures in Order to Grow
When you fail, or face any sort of setback in life, you will feel terrible. You might be angry, disappointed in yourself, deeply regretting things, and overall feel like a failure. This is a normal reaction but it’s something that you’ve got to put yourself through.
By putting yourself through the pain of a failure then you allow yourself the chance to learn and grow from it. Yes, it’s uncomfortable, and it might make you feel worse for a time, but you’ll learn so much that it’ll be worth the pain. If you need to cry then cry, it’s better to go through that emotional outburst so it’s over with and you’ll feel better sooner.
Even though you have to put yourself through the uncomfortable pains, there are steps you can take to make it easier. The most beneficial action you can take is to talk to others, especially close friends, and discuss how you’re feeling with them. Contrary to popular belief, your friends don’t care if you unload your stuff onto them, and in truth, they barely care at all. They care about their friend and how they’re doing, but your problems won’t ruin their day.
Talk to people to get things off your chest. You can also use them to bounce your thoughts off of to see if you’re thinking straight. You’ll solve a lot of your issues by just getting them off your chest, trust me on that.
You Must Analyse Everything
Analyse everything that you can from the failure and figure out why different things happened. Ask yourself what you could have done differently and how you might change your approach next time.
Depending on the circumstances, mentally blame yourself. Don’t say this out loud to others or act like it was your fault but if you mentally look at the situation as if it was your fault then you’ll start analysing your flaws. Even if everything was completely out of your control, you’ll still see some of your personal shortcomings and it’ll prepare you even better for next time around.
The pain of failure can often leave us replaying scenes over and over again in our head or thinking about particular people all day. This can be mentally draining but it can be used to your advantage. In cases of heartbreak, you’re going to be in this state for quite a while so you might as well make the most of it.
A trick that I learnt was to go over every aspect of everything and just break it all down. I would imagine talking to people and getting my thoughts out to them and then imagining what they might say. When I was heartbroken, I imagined talking to my ex all day about a variety of topics including how to be confident, how to achieve my goals, and how to improve my life and it honestly changed my life. I learnt so much about myself because I used that time to grow.
Understand that You’ve Experienced Failure Now
The best thing about failing is that it teaches you what failure feels like. Once you know what failure feels like then you lose your fear of it because you’ve dealt with it before.
Take the example of asking someone on a date. If you ask someone on a date and they say no do you know what will happen? You might get laughed at, you might feel embarrassed, and you’ll walk away empty handed. Yeah, it’ll suck, but you now know what failure feels like AND you know that you can handle it.
You’ll probably have some concerns about experiencing those feelings again, after all no one likes to feel discomfort, but you’ll know what failure looks and feels like. Confidence is all about the outcome and your ability to control it or handle it. If you’ve gone through the worst case scenario before then you can certainly go through it again. Just this time you’ll do it a little better.
In Summary
- Failure is a part of success
- You have to really experience the pain of failure in order to grow
- Use the pain of failure to analyse everything
- You know what failure feels like now, so you won’t be afraid of it next time