Failure can be difficult to deal with. Big change and failure, whether in your personal or professional life, can distort your view of yourself, torpedo your confidence, and convince you that you are less valuable as a person.
Fortunately, it is possible to move from feeling immense disappointment to feeling empowered with a little emotional regulation on your part. Here are 10 practical tips recommended by psychologists to help you overcome the consequences of failure and evolve your mindset for your next success.
1. Acknowledge your feelings
To manage the intense emotions of disappointment, Kalokerinos’ first suggestion is a deceptively simple strategy: acceptance. Go ahead and tell yourself that it’s okay to feel bad at first when something doesn’t turn out the way you wanted. Wallowing a little is good.
“It actually makes you feel better,” Kalokerinos says.
2. Be kind to yourself
If you’re struggling to find ways to show yourself some love, try taking a half-hour break to recharge, perhaps by taking a nap or connecting with a friend.
3. Use Distraction to Reset
Distraction, on the other hand, involves temporarily focusing on positive feelings. So when you return to the feeling of failure, it may be less intense and easier to deal with.
To cope with failure, Kalokerinos suggests doing something enjoyable that takes your attention away from negativity and rumination, like taking a walk, having a nice meal, running, listening to a podcast, or even spending an afternoon watching a show you enjoy on a streaming channel. Avoid unhealthy distractions, such as drinking alcohol, which will not help your cause in the long run.
4. Get Punny
“People often want to feel less bad. But in reality, sometimes it’s easier to put the bad aside and try to feel happy,” says Kalokerinos.
5. Adjust the way you talk to yourself
When things don’t go as planned, it’s easy to get caught up in your own thoughts, says Jason Moser, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist, professor and associate dean for research in the psychology department at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Dr. Moser says a simple internal language shift can help: Talk to yourself as if you’re someone else, using “you” or your name. Called remote self-talk, this dialogue strategy creates useful emotional distance from a difficult situation.
6. Connect to your values
Moser says that even when things don’t go the way you hoped, you should stay true to your personal values about growing, exploring new opportunities, and pushing yourself. By connecting to your core values, you might find help in accepting failure, he adds.
7. Treat failures as feedback
The most resilient among us may have learned to bounce back from failures by learning from their failures instead of being ashamed of them. Mistakes and setbacks do not define who you are; it’s information that helps you improve over time.
“Mistakes are a fundamental aspect of learning. Period,” says Moser.
8. Make an action plan for next time
Once you have begun to absorb the loss and have learned a little from your mistakes, consider creating an action plan to help you deal with future failures, as there will almost certainly be more down the road. Moser recommends taking time to think about how you might approach a similar disappointment in the future.
“You want to get information about how this mistake happened, how you can do something differently next time, and what will produce a match between what you intended to do and what actually happened,” he says.
In doing so, you may find that you have contributed to the situation in some way – it takes two to tango, after all – while other factors may be out of your control.
9. Look for unexpected positives
Remember that old saying about turning lemons into lemonade? When faced with a difficult situation, ask yourself: What significant thing happened as a result of this failure? What do I have now that I wouldn’t have had otherwise? Maybe by not landing your dream job, for example, you’ll have the opportunity to spend more time with family, Kalokerinos suggests.
10. Ask for help and support
If you’ve tried these tips and still can’t overcome your feelings of failure, Kalokerinos recommends asking friends, family, or a mentor to help you reframe the event. However, not just any old sound box will do the job.
“The difficulty with reaching out to other people is that you have to turn to other people who are empathetic, compassionate and good at this sort of thing,” Kalokerinos says. Seeking support from someone who tends to invalidate you can do more harm than good.
Can’t find the right person to lean on? Try a therapist. “They have been trained to support you with your emotions,” she says.
Takeaways
- Because failure can impact emotions and self-esteem, emotional regulation can help people move from overwhelm to empowerment. Start with strategies that ease intense emotions, such as acceptance, self-compassion, distraction, humor, and distanced self-talk.
- Once your feelings are more manageable, try thinking about failure differently by connecting to your core values, treating it as a learning opportunity, developing action plans, or looking for unexpected positives.
- If you’re having trouble coping on your own, reach out to empathetic friends, family, or a therapist who can help you work through your emotions.
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