How To Handle Failure

We all have a fear of failure on some level, and a lot of us can view this fear as some type of weakness. When we inevitably experience a failure we think, "I should have known better", "I should have tried harder," "I wasn't good enough," and so on. It is easy to be hard on ourselves and even on other people when we don’t reach our goals.   

Why Do We Fear Failure? 

This fear of failure is tied to our fear of the unknown. We need to know what is going to happen, and we need to know what to expect, and not knowing this brings anxiety. If we don't know what is going to happen, we can't trust what can happen in our lives, and we can't trust ourselves to create this life we want.  

Feelings Of Failure 

Though most of us have experienced quite a bit of failure in our life, it still can hit us hard, especially for things that we were really relying on. We can experience a lot of feelings, including anxiety, depression, and a sense of hopelessness. These strong negative emotions can affect several areas of our lives. There are a lot of factors that can play into our fear of being a failure. These factors include a lack of support in relationships, low self-esteem, negative self-talk, constantly comparing ourselves to others, and unrealistic expectations.  

How We Think Of Failure 

It has a domino effect when it comes to the fear of failure. We want several things for ourselves; we want to start a new career, business, or healthy relationship. Then we fail at something; whether we fail to land that promotion or get a loan to start our business, we fail and get hit with these uncomfortable emotions. Once we experience a failure in one area, it causes anxiety, and we can become uncertain with our choices in other things that we want in life. We start going down that negative road of thinking of "what if I can't do it," "what if this isn't for me," and on and on to the point we start to question our actions to reach other goals in our life. 

Then there is the fear of being judged, of people seeing our failure and either judging us or projecting their own insecurities onto us. Being told that we failed because we are being too picky or we need to set our sights a little lower and compromise.   

How To Handle Failure 

We experience disappointment when we experience a failure. It's this hard moment that we are letdown, and it's hard to see a positive at that time. But all failure is, is feedback. It's the universe's way of saying that this isn't the path for you or that something else is coming.  

It's important not to get stuck on your faults, not to think you aren't good enough, and hold yourself back from moving forward. It's important to motivate yourself every day to keep pushing for what you want and working that grind. Think of articles talking about people's success after a setback; Oprah Winfrey being fired as an evening news reporter before joining daytime TV, J.K. Rowling getting rejected by several publishers before releasing Harry Potter, and so on. But even with those failures, they were still able to keep motivated, keep pushing, and eventually succeed.  

So What Can We Do?  

The first thing is don't feel threatened by failure. Don't allow the fear of not succeeding hold you back. It is okay to feel bad, letdown, sad, and even angry. Your feelings are valid. There will be times when you experience setbacks with everything in life. You can't let it deter you from reaching for what you want. 

Next, you want to try developing healthy habits. Our fear of failure comes from other fears. Fears of being judged, fear of the unknown, and our insecurities. Work on self-love and self-awareness, and try to dig deeper on what it is you fear and why. Try to see if this fear is coming from an internal wound and start addressing that. A good habit to start is practicing being grateful for the people and things in your life. Try to acknowledge the relationships you have built, the support around you, and all the other good things that you have. If you are constantly stuck in fear, worrying about what will happen, you will mainly see the negative in your life. Your goal here is to shift your perspective.  

Then, you want to take small steps and not set your expectations and goals too high. When we set our goals too high, we have a greater chance of failing, so you want to have small goals and work your way up. Say the goal is to lose weight and are wanting to lose 40 lbs in 5 months. To reach this goal, you plan to hit the gym every day, go on a diet, and so on. You plan on making these big changes to your routine and really going at this with everything you have. But real change takes time, and daily exercise and diets are really big changes. It is easy to get burnt out or start to slip when we try to change too much at once, which can lead to failure. You want goals that can slowly build up that you can accomplish. Setting up more bite-sized goals, in this case, would be to eat a healthier breakfast in the morning, start going to the gym twice a week, cut out sodas, etc. You start with one small goal, then move on to the next, slowly building up each little success. These are smaller, more easily accomplishable goals that you are able to work in steps to your end goal of weight loss.  

Finally, you want to learn to accept your failure and to grow from it. Failure is a part of life. Yes, it’s difficult, but we all have to deal with it. Acknowledge your failure and try to learn from it. Look to see if you put too much on yourself. See if you gave yourself a goal that was far out of reach or one that wasn't the right path for you. Failure provides us with opportunities, don't let it drag you down.