How To Stop Feeling Like a Failure.
You never fail until you stop trying - Einstein.
In 2019, I went to the gym by myself for the first time to buy my membership.
I remember walking to the gym, feeling a huge weight in my chest. 'What if I don’t make it? What if I fail?'
Over time and through trial and error, I began to understand a key concept that I'm about to share with you.
The problem isn’t failing.
What truly matters is how you handle failure, how you react to it, and if you let it control your life.
More importantly, it's about the negative emotions that failure triggers within you rather than the actual act of failing.
Today, we’re going to discuss exactly that:, the perception of failure, the negative feelings associated to it and how not to let it control your life.
Basically, how to develop a healthy relationship with failure.
First of all, The way you view failure is more important than failure itself.
Failure is defined as the ‘lack of success,’ which means it doesn’t have to be permanent; it’s just a lack.
When you’re starting something for the first time, you lack everything the clarity, skills, knowledge, and methods.
Except for unexpected luck, 99% of the time, you’ll fail the first time you try something new, exactly for that reason.
This isn’t to say that you’re destined to fail, and that’s a crucial distinction to understand.
Quite the opposite, failing is necessary because it just means you don’t know how to do this thing YET. failure never means that you will never be able to do it.
You fail until you win; failure is not to be avoided but it’s a prerequisite for success.
So, the first thing to understand is that failure isn’t as negative as you think; it’s just feedback. It’s you trying, and your environment telling you that you’re not ready—YET.
The problem with how most people perceive failure is that they handover their power. They let past feedback dictate their current or future performance.
This doesn’t make any sense when you think about it, yet you’re doing this consciously or unconsciously on some level.
In reality, what happens is that as you try to engage in something, your brain brings back all the memories of you not succeeding at this thing.
Now you feel overwhelmed and paralyzed because it feels like someone is whispering in your ear that you can’t do it, on loop.
And this makes sense, adopting an evolutionary perspective.
You see, this comes from the fact that your brain is designed for preservation. It doesn’t want to take any risks that could be detrimental to you. More than that, it’s always trying to save energy.
That is why, if you fail once or more, your brain will see this activity as high risk with a very low chance of reward, and therefore, it’s better not to engage in it.
It will then proceed to use past failure as images to convince you to not engage back in this thing. Keep in mind, that the brain it’s not the enemy, it’s only purpose is to keep you alive.
The problem lies in the inadaptation of your brain to the current demands of modern society.
Second, You’re too close to failure.
Failure is feedback; it’s data. and treating it as such, is going to profoundly affect the perception and the interpretation that you make of it.
The problem is that the emotion linked to failure is strong—probably too strong.
Most of the time, when failure arises, there’s a deep and negative emotion linked to it. Whether it’s shame, fear, anger, sadness, deception, or humiliation, the emotion is the real obstacle.
People focus way too much on this negative emotion or mix of negative emotions.
This leads to anchoring this past negative feeling, magnifying its impact on your current life.
For example, let’s say you tend to be socially anxious and you tried going to the gym once. Because the pressure was too high, you didn’t step foot in the building. (Which was me back in 2019)
Now you keep reminding yourself of that failure, which triggers feelings of guilt and humiliation. Soon, this link will be so strong that it starts to become part of your identity.
‘I’m not an active person, I can’t exercise, I’m not good at sports’—meanwhile, you just tried once and stopped before entering the building.
Adopting a statistical and rational perspective it doesn’t make sense.
Imagine a scientist trying something one time, stopping and saying it doesn’t work, everyone will tell him that he just didn’t try enough times to even know if this thing even works.
The problem is that us, as humans, have a tendency to think more emotionally than rationally when it comes to failure.
This leads us to submerge and overwhelm ourselves with constant reminders of past negative experiences.
When, in all objectivity, the situation isn’t that big of a deal. And yet if you’ve replayed it in your mind 50 times, it becomes this giant monster of humiliation.
The solution is learning how to reframe the negative thought using absolute perception, and for that, you need to learn how to distance yourself from it.
Now, of course Perception is subjective by definition, but the goal is to stick to the facts as close as possible.
What truly happened ? instead of referring to the negative thought your mind has associated with the event, focus on reality not your perception and your interpretation of it.
It’s hard but trust me this will help you in all realms of life and it’s a skill worth practicing.
In our example, I went to the gym, I stopped in the parking lot, I looked at the gym, and then felt overwhelmed and went back home.
Stating the facts like this, de-dramatizes the whole scene. By doing that, you create enough space between the memory and the negative emotion to take an objective look at what happened.
Instead of drowning in fear and guilt whenever you bring back the episode.
Your mission is to identify the recurring negative thoughts, write them down, and then reframe them according to what really happened.
Take an objective look at them, are they useful and realistic (spoiler, most of the times, they’re not) and your job is to correct them, gradually.
For instance, you might think that you’ll never be fit, you’re the worst at sports, and you’re condemned to live in this out-of-shape body.
Meanwhile, all of this cascades from one time, one situation where you tried going to the gym once and didn’t make it because you felt too anxious that day.
Instead, cut the loop and introduce a new productive thought: "Yeah, I felt overwhelmed and didn’t go to the gym,
but this doesn’t doom me to a passive and out-of-shape existence. It just means that I have to try again and handle the pressure better."
By using this process, you’ll be able to desensitize yourself, deactivating the negative emotional pattern
Which will over time, allow you to try again without feeling paralyzed by past emotions.
How not to let failure become one of your characteristics
Because if there’s one thing that you can be 100% sure of, is the fact that you’ll miss, slip, fail again, a lot. If you don’t, probably means that you’re not trying enough.
The secret is to simply be okay with failing. If you’ve identified recurring negative thought patterns,
you’ll realize that failure doesn’t have any real impact on your current situation.
Easier said than done, I know Because it lies in something much deeper than just failure, all of that links to identity.
Again, the only thing that has the power to truly disturb you is your emotional response, not the fact of failing per se.
Therefore, if you learn to deactivate the negative emotions, you’ll be more than able to try again without feeling too much pressure.
The issue arises when you perceive failure as too profound and you because of constant reminiscence, you start defining yourself using failure.
This is dangerous because if you do this for an extended period of time, you’ll remodel your identity around that failure. Resulting in you acting that past failure again and again.
As your brain has encoded that this failure is so important that it needs to be part of your persona.
If you don’t want that, which trust me you don’t, you need to de-aggravate the intensity and the frequency of your emotional response to failure.
But for that to happen, you have to expose yourself to it and be willing to try again in good faith.
This is the hardest part. Identifying and reframing emotions associated with failure is one thing; being willing to try again with an open heart is another.
Let’s return to our example. The plan for me, what clear, it was to go back to the exact same gym, reduce my emotional response, staying calm and rational and enter the building to buy my membership.
Now this may take 1, 2, or 10 attempts—the speed doesn’t matter at first, the only thing that matters is that you’re able to control your emotional reaction after the failure.
You want to expose yourself to the situation and learn how to slowly diminish and control the negative reaction that this will trigger.
Once you’re in control enough—not in total control, but in control enough—don’t wait for life to send you a fairy. Just go, use your legs, focus on absolute perception aka reality, and don’t let yourself get stuck in the negative loop.
Don’t let failure define your persona. You need to make a clear distinction between identity and failure. Otherwise your failures will dictate the outcomes of your life.
What has happened to you has no direct control over your current decisions but that’s an insight you need to discover for yourself going through the process.
What Should You Rely On to Thrive?
If you want to make the best out of every situation, even when failure is involved, you need to focus on building grit.
‘’Grit is passion and perseverance for long term goals’’ - A. Duckworth.
You need to cultivate a meaningful long-term vision that will serve as protection for your identity.
This means finding a solid reason to endure repeated failures and still be fine with whatever you’re doing.
This vision will act as safety net against the negative thoughts that arise from failure.
The thing is, if you fail without having any reason to engage in the first place, chances are the negative emotions will take over and prevent you from engaging back again.
Returning to our example, imagine your long-term vision is to be fit so you can play with your kids or have a better quality of life and health span. This would be a good enough reason for you to try again and again until it works despite failing.
On the other hand, if you’re just going to the gym because you want to become an Instagram influencer, This won’t last against failure. This isn’t about grit it’s about social validation.
Grit is the first character trait you need. It plays a major role in regulating your reaction to failure in the present and the future.
This goes back to a fundamental concept: the reason, the ultimate purpose behind why you’re engaging in something, is greater than the thing itself.
Attach yourself to this deep emotional reason to change, and you’ll be able to sustain the process. But that implies finding that reason first.
And the good thing is that using willpower and introspection, anyone is capable of doing so.
For this to happen, you have to be willing to fail, to reflect, and to have faith in the process.
Failure isn’t an endpoint; it defines the beginning. Failure means you’re trying but not there yet; it’s an indicator and should be treated as such.
Don’t let your emotional perception of failure control your life and your decisions.
Dive into the process of managing past, present, and upcoming failures to make the most of them and build a life where fear, humiliation, guilt, and regret do not dictate your outcomes.
I hope this help, trust the process.
References :
https://2009-2017.state.gov/m/med/dsmp/c44950.htm#:~:text=Resilience refers to the ability,bounce back” from difficult experiences.