Failing hurts, whether you were passed over for a promotion at work or didn’t make the marathon cut. To avoid experiencing unpleasant feelings, many people will go to tremendous lengths.
There are things you may do to feel better if you find yourself thinking, “I am a failure,” as this is crucial information to know. Knowing how to handle failure in a healthy way takes some of the dread out of it and may even lessen the agony, allowing you to recover more quickly.
1. Accept your emotions.
Several feelings, including humiliation, embarrassment, fear, wrath, and grief, are associated with failure. Since those emotions are unpleasant, many people will try anything to avoid experiencing them. So feel free to acknowledge your emotions. Recognize your emotions and allow yourself to feel sorry for yourself for a while. As you give yourself permission to feel your feelings, name them.
2. Practice Healthy Coping Skills
A few healthy strategies to cope with discomfort include calling a friend, engaging in deep breathing exercises, taking a bubble bath, going on a stroll, or playing with your pet. Finding a coping mechanism that works for you is crucial because not all coping mechanisms are effective for everyone.
3. Accept an Appropriate Level of Responsibility
It’s crucial to acknowledge the full extent of your fault for failing. If you take on too much, you could unnecessarily blame yourself. But if you put the blame for your failure on other people or unfavorable circumstances, you won’t be able to learn from it.
4. Consider What You Can Learn.
If you’re willing to learn, failure can be an excellent teacher. Did you commit an error? Did you commit a number of errors?
Consider what you might do differently the next time. Then, you will make sure that your failure served as a lesson in life that assisted you in learning something. Consider a failure as a step towards your objectives rather than as a load that is pulling you down.
5. Face Your Fears of Failure
When failure finally occurs after you’ve spent the most of your life avoiding it, it can be extremely frightening. But one way to ease the discomfort is to face your worries.
Experiment with being uncomfortable. Try new things where you could fail or do things that might make you unpopular. You’ll eventually discover that failing isn’t as horrible as you would think.
