You got an F!

AA blog on Psychology Today titled “Turning Failure into Fuel for Success” discusses a study about failure and success in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise.¹ A team looked at what happens to us when we fail, and whether the way we manage our thoughts and feelings affects future success or failure.

What they discovered may not surprise you. When we fail it hits our self-esteem, and we feel negative emotions: anger, anxiety, shame. What matters is how we cope with that hit: whether the failure affects our future performance, whether we can face it and accept that we may do better next time, and whether we can accept that failing is useful for future success.

There are a few steps that help with moving on.

1. Own the failure as yours. That means accepting it and taking responsibility for it.
2. Don’t over-analyse it. The temptation is to ruminate, going over the process again and again looking for a key or a solution. What actually happens is that you wrap yourself in anxiety and more anger, and find you can’t let it go. You start thinking about it all night and all day.
3. Notice all the feelings around it. Shame, anger, anxiety, frustration, sadness. Accept them for what they are, and don’t label them good or bad.
4. Bring out the self-compassion and smother yourself in it where necessary. Beating yourself up won’t help you move on. Go back to the first step and have a firm conversation with yourself about self-forgiveness, and about the fact that all humans fail and make mistakes.
5. Identify what needs to be done or changed, and what order the steps go in. Plan for action.
6. Be willing to change and adapt. Do you need more flexibility? Does this need to sit and rest for another season?

Failure can teach us, and it can lead to success. How we cope with it is the key. So when you fail today, try to think another way around it.