At some point in life, something won’t go as expected. Maybe you need to start considering how personal injury attorneys get paid when they lose a case, you don’t do well on an exam or you just weren’t able to pull off a task that you thought you could. In short, you failed.
While failure isn’t always a bad thing in and of itself, it still stings. In fact, the pain of losing is more extreme than the emotions you feel when you succeed. Many people fear failure as a result and simply don’t know how to handle it properly. This article will hopefully help change that by giving you some information on how to properly handle failure.
Let Yourself Feel It
Once you have an uninterrupted moment to process what happened, do so. Let yourself feel the emotions caused by failure. As each one flows through, try and name what it is and then let it run its course.
Most of the time, these emotions will be negative, like sadness and shame. You may want to avoid them by distracting yourself or suppressing them. This will simply make you feel worse, though, so don’t do this.
Besides, you may be shocked at what you find. You may feel relieved or even happy now that the shoe has dropped.
You often know when you’ll fail long before it happens, but this doesn’t mean you remove your expectation from yourself. And even if you do, others may not. Once the failure happens and the pressure is gone, all expectations will be too, at least for a little while, and you’ll finally be able to relax.
Prevent Unhealthy Coping
You can’t fill the void caused by failure. Food, alcohol, etc. won’t make you feel better; it’ll make you feel much, much worse and may even lead to an addiction. When you begin to find yourself turning to these unhealthy coping mechanisms, replace them with healthy ones instead.
Find someone to talk to, go enjoy one of your hobbies, or just go for a walk. When you feel the void deepen, it may be because you’re not actually dealing with the failure or the weight of the problem caused by it is increasing. It’s time to start figuring out the problem and finding a solution at this point.
If you can’t figure out the cause or it keeps getting worse no matter what you do, then you should talk to a therapist and see if they can figure out what’s going on.
Embrace It
Once you’ve handled the negative feelings associated with your failure and directed yourself to healthy coping mechanisms, it’s time to embrace your failure in the way that works best for you.
For many, simply forgiving themselves and accepting the situation for what it is is all that needs to be done. Others need to accept the negatives of the situation while finding something that can be spun into a positive.
For example, if you failed to get a job that you really wanted, at least you can find an even better opportunity now or spend a bit of time focusing on that new hobby. Just don’t lie to yourself here; you did still fail, and you have to recognize that still.
Some people can turn any failure into a joke, which is similar to this. However, doing this to both yourself and others needs to be done cautiously or you’ll end up causing even more damage.
Move Forward
Moving on from failure can sometimes be difficult but the failure itself can help you with that. Once you’re able to think about it without feeling awful, do so. Really consider the situation to see what happened correctly, what could have been done better, and what was an abject failure. Then, start learning.
What you did right in the situation will be both insightful and a massive self-esteem boost as you see that you can do right even in the face of adversity. In the times when the failure was clear, see why it happened and if there was anything at all that could have resolved it. Gray areas should be observed as well, though they may be a bit more complicated to understand.
Once you have this information, see how you feel about moving forward. Once you’re able to seriously consider it, do so, and take the lessons you learned along the way. Who knows, you may even be able to prevent another similar failure in the future with these lessons.