Overcoming Continual Failures

Any way you look at it, failure stings. No one wants to fail. But it happens. It might sound strange to discover this, but failure doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you don’t let it stop you from achieving your life goals.

Don’t Let Repeated Failures Scar Your Dignity

A mistake that some people make is they allow failures to impact their self-worth. Even knowing that failures happen, some people still internalize them and instead of separating who they are from the failure, they link the two.

You must remember that you are separate from the things that you fail at. Don’t beat yourself up when things don’t work out. Give yourself credit for having tried to begin with.

Failure happens to everyone. All you have to do is search online for well-known people who succeeded despite their failures and you’ll get back over a million hits. What separated them from people who didn’t accomplish their life goals wasn’t talent.

It was the determination that their failures were not going to define who they were as a person. You can do that too. You do this by watching your mindset. Catch any negative self-talk and stop it.

Don’t let it attack your dignity. If you think, “I am a failure,” then you’re entertaining a false belief. Many of these beliefs will rear up whenever you do encounter something that attacks your dignity.

You must correct that kind of false belief immediately. Replace it with something like, “No, this failure is just one way that didn’t work for me,” and then try again. Realize that there will always be a certain amount of discomfort each time you attempt to do something.

Any time that you step outside of your comfort zone or you try to make changes in your life, there will always be pain during the growth cycle. Failure is a growth whether you realize it or not.

You grow because you learn valuable lessons each time that you fail. What you have to do is accept that failure is a learning point. Understand that you gain mental strength every time you keep on going despite the number of failures you may experience.

Reaffirm your goals. This will help you to keep your vision as the focus of your attention rather than the feelings you may be experiencing from the failure. Even though the results weren’t what you’d hoped for at this time, that doesn’t mean what you want isn’t in store for you.

Be careful that you don’t internalize them and allow the failures to paralyze you. Sometimes a period of inaction can follow a failure because it makes you question your ability to move forward - especially if you’ve allowed some negative self-talk.

To push back against potential scars, value yourself. Accept who you are and what you’re trying to do with your life. When you recognize and protect your self-worth by rejecting blame from yourself or others, then failures, no matter how many you have won’t be able to leave a mark.

Quit Focusing on Faults and Recover from Setbacks with Determination

A failure is disappointing and the main thing that people do when there’s a failure is they immediately start looking for fault. It’s human nature to want to get to the bottom of something.

People want answers to problems and when failure occurs, they want to know the cause. Even if you do figure out that it was your fault or your partner’s fault or your colleague or friend’s fault, the problem still happened.

Knowing will do nothing except add to your emotional deck of cards. It won’t change your frustration, your anger, your doubts or your fears. You don’t gain forward momentum by stopping to find fault with yourself or others.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what happened. What matters is what you do from the setback moment on. When a setback occurs, it can kick you right in the self-worth if you let it.

It’ll make you question if you’re on the right track or not. You’ll find that you’re second guessing yourself. Those are common reactions. Just because you experience a setback doesn’t mean that success isn’t going to happen.

You have to refocus your attention from the problem to the next step. Keep hanging on to the belief in yourself and in your determination to succeed. It might be easier to give in to self-doubt, to laying blame, but don’t lose sight of why you began your journey in the first place.

Look back at the reason that you started on the path that you’re on. Returning to your inner motivation will help restore the determination to look at your goals and not at faults. 

There are some things that you can do to make sure that you recover from a setback rather than letting it hold you back. Accept the responsibility for what happened. Just acknowledge it and then dismiss it.

You’ll struggle to recover if you hold on to any part of the failure or if you waste time rehashing it over and over. It’s okay to want to understand why the failure happened as long as you want to know because you want to learn from it.

Learning from a setback can allow you to correct a problem that could cause future setbacks. Wanting to know why something happened so you can use it to further your goals is different from wanting to know who caused something to happen.

Recover with determination, not with a pity party. If you sit around and give in to discouragement, then you put your life on hold. It’s normal for a failure to cause emotional upset.

Just don’t compound the setback by letting self-pity keep you stuck. A setback doesn’t stay a setback when motion is involved. Stay determined and reengage in the course that you’ve set for yourself.

Confidence Is Something You Have to Store Up for Days When You Fail

Confidence is the belief that you can do something. You trust that you have the ability to make your goals happen regardless of whatever circumstances you encounter. It’s good to have confidence and many people do.

Until it’s tested by failure. Then their confidence seems to dissipate as easily as the wind blows. All of a sudden, the certainty you feel is gone. It evaporates in the face of the failure.

All your self-assurance is gone, and you find yourself doubting whether or not you possess the ability to keep striving toward your goals. When you experience failure, it affects your confidence because while most people plan for setbacks, deep down, many of them don’t really expect them.

Failure wasn’t something they thought could happen to them. Yet it has. And wise people understand that you can’t predict failure. There are any number of things that simply go wrong and you can’t predict that.

But there is something that you can do to prepare yourself. The key to getting through the days when you do fail is to already have a storehouse of confidence before that ever happens.

The way to create that buoy of confidence isn’t difficult. You start by taking stock of every goal you’ve met and everything that you’ve succeeded at. Write these situations down if you need to.

Then think back to the setbacks that you went through during each of these times before you reached success. This helps you see that each time failure occurred, you rose to the occasion.

You handled it and you were able to move on. When you encounter failure, you’ll still be able to hold onto confidence and it won’t shake your self-worth. You’ll be able to say to yourself that you’ve handled stuff in the past.

This is just one more hurdle to get through. I’ve got this will become your mantra. Before you face failure, take stock of all the abilities that you have. What you’re good at. Look at how those abilities are going to get you through whatever failure comes.

Allow yourself to visualize the success. Before you begin pursuing your goals, learn as much as you can about what you need to know. That way, when failure hits, you’ll realize that you already know how to deal with the problem and solve it.

Cultivate a positive mindset. When you store up positivity, you’ll be able to rely on this during a setback. There will be a well of uplifting self-worth boosting thoughts to help you through.