Defeat. It’s agonizing, painful, depressing, and anger-inducing. It puts us on an emotional elevator ride straight to the basement. And if we stay there, our mental state only worsens. We consider giving up on our goal; we consider settling for less; we lose our confidence. And we certainly don’t want to see other people and talk about it. But here’s the thing. While our egos may be bruised, we have another way to look at the situation. We now know what doesn’t work, so we can check that approach off and go on to the next one. Maybe, in fact, failure is something that ought to be celebrated a bit. O.K. So that might be going a bit too far when you are in the throes of defeat, but you can overcome your failure much faster and move one with these suggestions that we have found in the blogs of these highly rated paper writing services.
Think of Failure as a New Beginning
In 1919, Walt Disney was a reporter for a Kansas City newspaper. He really wanted to be a reporter at the time. His editor told him he had no imagination and no good ideas. Wow. Disney then picked himself up, took another unfulfilling job, saved his money and bought an animation studio. That company went bankrupt. Two major fails. We know how it all ended.
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job at a Baltimore TV station, and was told that she was “unfit” for television news. Wow again. Seems she was pretty fit for television after all.
Both of these people could have taken their defeats, rolled over, taken jobs to pay the bills, and lived in mediocrity. You can do that too. But, because you can’t see the larger picture right now, you better brush yourself off and focus on your “new beginning.” Failure will only break you if you give in to it.
Get Over What Others Might Think
Yes, failure can bring thoughts of embarrassment. Who wants to admit to others that things didn’t quite work out? And we avoid friends and family, because we just know they are talking about us and want to give us all kinds of advice and “I told you so” moments.
Sylvester Stallone is pretty open about his failures and what others thought of him during his failing years. He was turned down for roles over 1500 times; when he didn’t have the money to pay an electric bill, he had to sell his dog. And, then, he even starred in a porn film just to get in front of a camera. Makes you wonder how he ever told his parents about that one, and what they must have been thinking. He could have just gotten a job. Instead he wrote his own movie, found investors, and the legend of “Rocky” was born.
Allow Yourself a Short Pity Party and then Get to the Learning Party
You can spend days in front of TV, binge eating, and feeling sorry for yourself. After all, you don’t have to address the “why” of your failures. And if you don’t address those “whys,” you won’t learn – when you don’t learn, you repeat the same mistakes.
Jerry Seinfeld has often spoken of his early failure and what he learned. He had a bit part on the TV show “Benson,” and arrived one day on the set only to discover that his role had been cut out of the script. This was how he learned he was fired – he wasn’t funny enough, they said. He did some soul searching, to be sure. He knew he wanted to be in comedy, but he also knew that he had to figure out what had to be changed if he were to become “funny” enough for TV. His solution was to learn through practice. So, he hit the comedy club scene and worked on his routines, until he became “funny enough.”
Keep Your Focus and Create Your Daydream
I really like J.K Rowling’s life story. Her entire world collapsed at once. She was fired from her job as a secretary, because she was working on her book when things were slow. This was after her husband divorced her and her mother died. She then had to go on welfare because she had two boys to feed. 200 rejections and 7 years later, the first of the Harry Potter series was finally published.
One thing that many people experience after a failure is the feeling that their entire world has just collapsed. When you are in this frame of mind, it is really hard to revive that focus on the goal. One of the best ways to do this is to set up a daydream of your ideal situation if the goal is met. Get a picture in our mind’s eye of what your life will look like, what you will look like, where you will be living, and what you will be doing when that goal is achieved. That daydream needs to be re-run many times a day. Not only will it get your mind off of your current failure, it will help you regain that focus you need.
Failure Means You’re Still Among the Living
People who have never failed are really missing out on something. There is something about being able to look back at failures and see how they all happened for a reason – to push you forward. And overcoming those failures is really the biggest success of all.