It is common human nature to make mistakes and encounter failure. Nobody is perfect and these mistakes are the true essence of our learning process in life. Failures help us grow by learning from them. They are the first hand experience we have on gaining a wider perspective towards uncertain circumstances and how to deal with them.
Nonetheless, nobody likes to face failure. It is an experience dreaded by everyone. As humans, we wish to avoid failure as much as possible. This is because, we give failure great power over the emotions we tend to face. We tend to hold onto failure, and it is the thing that makes us afraid of moving forward. It always remains in the back of our minds and hearts as a shameful and painful incident. This is not how it should be. We should be able to let go of failure and to learn from it. It should not have the control that it currently has, on our lives.
Maybe your life is currently not where you want it to be or where you expected it to be. Or maybe you’re doing OK, but some old failures and demons are always inside your head. Even though you are not your thoughts, it still hurts.
Failure can take place in various forms. Whether it’s your business, career, health, social, or love life, you want to move on. Everybody’s been there, you’re not alone. Here you can find 5 great practical tips for changing your current state:
1. Experience
“Turn your wounds into wisdom”
~ Oprah Winfrey ~
It happened to you before and the earth is still spinning. It could be a business that you worked on very hard but eventually failed, a financial crisis, a bad ending to a relationship, or even relatively smaller things, like this one time in school where you went to talk to a pretty girl and she turned you down, or the time where you said something really stupid and everyone laughed on your expanse.
What did you do then that helped you? Who did you talk to that cheered you up? What did you learn from it? What music/movie/book helped you to change your mood?
You need to constantly remind yourself that failure does not have to be a part of your identity. You’ve encountered it several times in the past, but this does not mean you yourself are a failure. You have succeeded in multiple other areas of your life. The chances of success and failure are equally proportionate. In a normal person’s life, the chances of succeeding are completely equivalent to that of failing. There is a fine line between being a failure as a person and encountering failures. You need to discover that line based on your experiences and learn to differentiate between the two. Analyze your feelings at such a point and try overcoming them by looking towards the positive side.
2. Focus
“Whatever it is you are focusing
~ unknown ~
on you will receive more of”
When we are going through a rough patch, we often time spend most of our energy on what we don’t want, what makes us feel even worse, and dwell on the failure – that something we actually don’t want to be doing. In a day you only have 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. How would you like to spend them?
Whatever it is that you’re focusing on during your parts of the day will become more and more significant in your life. If you focus on the good, you’ll get more of it, if you focus on the bad, you’ll get more of it. How can you change your focus effectively?
Every experience you face in life, whether a success or failure, always has two sides to it. The negative side and the positive side. You can either learn from an experience or you can let it tarnish your self esteem and confidence in the long run. Learn to divert your focus. Don’t target the failure towards yourself or personalize it. Always look towards the bright side of things.
When faced with failure, look towards the positive side of it. You are learning through first hand experience. You can analyze the entire situation and understand what led you to this point. What were the shortcomings you faced and had they been avoided; would you have achieved success. Also, the entire experience leads you to learning along the way. Although the end result may have led you to fail, the path towards it may have allowed you to grow as a person and learn from it. This will let your mind have more peace – failure is not entirely bad.
Remind yourself continually that a failure in the past does not define who you are as a person today. You have grown and you have changed. With varying circumstances, one achieves growth.
3. Ask the right questions
“If you’re asking a lousy question
~ Tony Robbins ~
your brain will give you one hell
of a lousy answer”
If you’re going to continue asking yourself all day long why you are so stupid, so untalented, such a failure, so unattractive, then guess what’s going to happen…your mind will come up with all of the “right” answers.
Asking questions is one of the most powerful tools we have as human beings. Mastering your questions asking can be a big challenge, but the reward is much greater than you will know.
Analyze the entire situation critically. Do the best you can and try not to bring emotions into the matter and judge the matter as a third person would. Do not feel angry or frustrated. You should not feel any sort of regret for this matter. Try to gather together facts and question yourself on them.
What kind of questions can you ask for getting better results? Some great ones are:
What can I do right now right away that will make me feel better?
What can I learn from that?
What’s good about this situation that I can’t see right now?
Be sure to question and remind yourself of the various qualities that you have been equipped with because of this failure. You are more reliant on yourself, determined, and compassionate. You carry a wider perspective towards life, which is what matters the most.
Don’t only ask yourself the questions, try to find proper answers to them. This will help you towards finding calmness and peace. Remember that, a past failure does not define who you are today. Remind yourself of this. Try to question how you have changed as a person since then? What things do you know now that you were previously unaware of? This will reassure you of your capabilities as an individual and let you critically analyze your growth as a person, too.
4. Routine
“Repetition is the mother of skill”
~ Tony Robbins ~
Now that you have your focus and questions done right and you know what is it that you want and do not want, it’s time to implement it in your everyday life and build your life momentum. Shifting your focus to optimism and positivity doesn’t have to be a chore, in fact it’s quite the opposite.
It’s actually very important to embrace the things that energize you in life and make you happy, do more of them! When you are happy every aspect of your life becomes easier, and you have a lot more energy and vitality to make the changes that you need to do in your mindset and your life.
It could be going to the beach, watching a beautiful sunset, listening to the music that you love. Whatever it is that makes you feel good, make sure you find time for it!
Learn to see beauty in the uncertainty of your life. It is true that nothing is in our control. Although we try to build outcomes from the goals we set, it is not necessary that our paths lead directly towards them. As the path of our life tends to vary, so do the obstacles we encounter. However, within those obstacles is a beauty previously unknown to us.
Every effort we make cannot be appreciated and recognized. Expecting such great results from ourselves is putting unnecessary mental stress upon our minds. We should learn to go with the flow and not to be put a-back by small failures. These failures could be a small obstacle that could eventually lead you towards success.
5. Learn from the greatest
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots
~ Michael Jordan ~
in my career. I’ve lost almost 300
games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to
take the game winning shot and missed.
I’ve failed over and over and over
again in my life.
And that is why I succeed.“
Do you know what Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Milton Hershey, H.J. Heinz, and P.T. Barnum all have in common? That’s right, they all went bankrupt at some point in their lives (some of them even more than once!). And the list goes on – Elbert Einstein, Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and so many other successful people have gone through very rough times in life.
The truly inspirational Michael Jordan quote above sums it beautifully. All great people had difficulties, and that is what made them so great. Learn from them.
Every great personality has a success story. These stories do not show positivity throughout. To achieve success, they have been through the roughest and toughest of times. They were however determined to show their greatness, which they undoubtedly ended up doing. A small twig in their way towards success could not stop them from the greater dream they wished to accomplish and nor should yours.
Failures were the stepping stones towards success for these great personalities. Failure used to motivate them further towards achieving what they believed in. Had they stopped at the smallest of failures; we would not have such great personalities to keep as our mentors.
Read their story, hear them tell it in their own words, imagine what they had to go through, and how they overcame it and came out stronger than ever.
All in all, failure and success cannot be profoundly determined. They are end results that we achieve through efforts we wish to take. However, they are completely uncertain. We need to see the beauty these uncertainties in our lives hold for us. A sudden failure does not mean you are a failure as a human. Not at all. It only shows your efforts towards following your dream. Obstacles are bound to occur along the way, but a truly successful person continues on the path despite facing hurdles along the way. You may fall down today, and this may stop you from continuing on your path, especially when you are so close to the fruits of your success.
