Article
Failure of any kind is
tough. Most people talk about how failure is part of success and how you should
continue with your efforts until you succeed, but most don’t talk about how to
deal with failure when it happens. Sometimes, the truth is it’s not so easy to
pick yourself up and continue to try again, especially when you are just tired.
Jumia Travel shares 4 ways
to help you deal with failure and find the courage to go on.
It
actually requires effort
That sinking feeling that
comes with failure, the consequence, the pain and regret… none of them will go
away unless you make a conscious effort to make them go away. Make peace with
the fact that you are going to have to fight to be back on your ‘A’ game, if
not failure will permanently brand you with its scar – the scar of self-doubt.
Self-doubt is a lack of
confidence or reliability on one’s own thoughts, abilities, motives, actions,
personality etc. No one should have to live with such a scar; no one should
give in to such a life. Self-doubt can easily become the cause of every missed
step in life. It steals dreams, denies hope and assassinates faith, as someone
once said. Be prepared to fight to rise up from where failure threw you down
and move forward.
Don’t
personalize it
You failed at something;
it’s not your failure, it’s a failure. Learn to detach the fact that you failed
from your person, from who you are. The fact is, failure is a part of life;
nobody gets it right all the time. In life you are going to fight many battles,
willingly and unwillingly, and you have to choose your battles and decide not
to let the belief that you are a failure because of certain times you failed,
be one of your battles. Understand that failure is a message to either ‘try
again’, ‘try some other way’ or ‘try something else’ and move on.
Learn your lessons
We fail because there is
something that should either have been done better or should not have been done
at all. In other words, there is a sort of hole that needs to be filled.
Look back, no matter how
difficult it might be, revisit whatever you need to revisit, and try to find
the hole that caused your fall. There is always a reason for failure; you only
need to patiently find it. But make sure you don’t do this immediately, because
thinking and rethinking about the fact that you failed, replaying the events in
your mind so soon especially when you are still raw from the hurt, can be
counter-productive. It might end up leading you to depression and in more
extreme cases, self-hatred and suicidal thoughts.
So, wait before you reach
this stage, make sure you are relatively detached from the event to see it in a
fairly objective way so that you can get the truth. If third parties you can
get feedback from where involved, please venture to ask them questions on the reason(s)
for the failure. Ask questions (Why did I fail? Could I have avoided it? What
could I have done differently? What did I learn from all that happened?), get
the facts, understand why you failed and learn.
Move
on
You have failed. Accept,
learn from it and move on. Give yourself time to make peace with the fact, give
yourself time to analyze all that happened as objectively as you can and move
on to the next thing or step. Don’t dwell on it.
I once read the story of a
coach that gave his players 24 hours and not an hour more, to feel the pain of
every loss they had and joy of every win as deeply as they could. After the
traditional 24 hours were up, the coach and his players continued the next day
like nothing significant happened. They had moved on to the next challenge and
could not afford to waste any energy on what was no longer relevant.
Remember, failure is a
message to either ‘try again’, ‘try some other way’ or ‘try something else’.
Discern its exact message to you and move on.
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