By Joseline Byakatonda
TIt is subtle to say that youth today find: Nothing breeds success like failure, most people admit, yet we still fear to fail. In life, we all experience rain showers of success and happiness and deserts or hot sun of failure, disappointments. Failure is an unpleasant experience, no doubt about that. It comes dressed in different forms; not achieving a desirable grade, unsuccessful job application or interview, a relationship gone sour, not being able to save a loved one, or any other set back. Yet as a reality, failure is a normal and necessary part of life and in most cases, the foundation to success. Moreover, a fear of failure can hold us back from seizing opportunities that would lead us to success.
Why then are we afraid of failure when we intellectually acknowledge that it can be turned into opportunity! Science, through research, has proven that the fear of failure is directly linked to our sense of self-worth. Parents, guardians and all those in authority that interact with children and adolescents set the foundation for the belief system one holds for life about self and in turn failure. If a person doesn’t believe that they have the ability to succeed or if through repeated failures the ‘I can succeed’ belief system is diminished, then they will engage in practices that seek to preserve his or her self-worth.
In the bid to adapt, you become an over-striver or failure- avoiding person. As an over-striver, you are afraid of failure and will go extra miles to perform. For example, for such a person, if a pass mark is 50%, they won’t strive for 70% but 50% only. The life of a failure-avoiding person is characterized with procrastination, excuses or low participation. Everyone deals with failure differently depending on their predisposition. If you have been nurtured in a perfectionist or always poking environment, you will most likely struggle with failure, it being the basis of approval for who you are.
Thus, the lower the self-esteem, the higher the struggle with failure, It’s the responsibility of every parent, guardian or those in authority to provide opportunities of learning through failure. The children, teens and young adults should be allowed to make mistakes and then talk through them and with them.
This is what builds confidence, capability, happiness and high self-esteem anchored on ability not achievements. A more helpful approach therefore is not to avoid situations with a risk of failure but rather change the way we perceive failure and how we deal with it. In all this though, it’s important to wear the right attitude.
Tips for coping with failure
Allow yourself to feel every emotion
Because of the uncomfortable emotions like disappointment, sadness, anger, worry, unforgiveness, grief, and more so, shame that emerge due to failure, our instincts often will want to escape by suppressing or avoiding them. Importantly, instead of struggling with your feelings, just choose to let them be, then try to give each emotion the right name and the ‘why’ behind it. Why am I feeling sad? Thus, allow time to experience them for unspecified time depending on how deep the failure and the emotions generated are.
Be self-loving by practicing self-compassion
After acknowledging the pain and accepting the emotions, embrace the person hurting with compassion and that person is you. Treat yourself as you would treat a friend in a similar situation. Self-compassion means extending understanding to yourself; instead of criticizing and judging self. Self- compassion is accepting the flaws of humanity, learning to let go, knowing mistakes are human. You can do this by using a self-compassion journal to self-talk and memorise what’s good about self against the bad that emotions bring and judgements of those around us. Importantly, some setbacks require stepping aside to refresh and sober up away from the scene the failure happened Embrace a positive mindset: failure is just a learning curve Experience is the best teacher,’ they say.
But experience only comes by doing and making both good and bad decisions that later become a wealth of knowledge, hence the belief, old age is wisdom. Although painful, learning from past failures grows us to success. The golden question is, ‘What treasure of knowledge remains after all is wiped away? ‘What can I learn from it?’ Useful assessment only comes from perceiving information from a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset; knowing that your qualities and skills are elastic, can develop and improve with experience. With a growth mindset, failure is always a learning curve.
Re-strategize and move forward
Once you have practiced self-compassion, and reset to a growth mindset, then it’s time to re-strategize, plan for the future and move forward. Staying stuck in failure long will develop into depression and fixed mindset. While giving yourself a self-compassion, ensure it’s not longer than necessary. Even after re-strategizing, remember to leave room for set-backs that may occur due to factors beyond your control. Failure is
a learning curve, until death, you keep learning on earth and when you cross over to eternity, you keep learning the systems there and how to live in eternity. Just like mistakes are human, so is learning.
Decide never to quit
Until you decide never to quit or to give up, failure may remain a threat. Everyday is different. It takes just time to accept and master the game.
Sleep, wake-up. Prove your capability to yourself and challenge the negative voices around to the best of your ability. As the notion goes: winners never quit.
Launch deep into prayer
In the time of dissolution, the best gift to give oneself is prayer. Talking to God and seeking discernment in the mist of life. Failure teaches us to rely on God alone. Until you hit a snag in life, you may never learn this reality. Why failure is not the Lord’s, He turns all things for our good as Romans 8:28 says, and in suffering, the Lord implants Christ’s character in us and the meek are groomed in trials
