Dealing with Failure: How To Enjoy Failure?

Dealing with Failure

In our chase to achieve the goals we set for ourselves, we often forget about the means to reach those goals. In this article, I’d like to emphasize on the need to think straight before undertaking any task and talking about dealing with failures. You can easily learn how to handle failure by asking yourself the right questions.

Congratulations on your failure!

Congratulations! You have just failed the most important exam of your student life. You are depressed, angry, confused and most of all, helpless. Well, I can tell you one thing for sure: You’re not alone!

As a matter of fact there are approximately 30-40 lakh students like you, suffering with the same consequences of failure. The picture that I paint for you is pretty grim; you just want to lie in bed all day and never wake up. Procrastination is at its peak, everyone including your parents are tense.  The only thought that is running in a loop in your mind is: WHAT NEXT?

Start with Why

Well, before that, I’ll suggest that you rewind for a bit, and ask yourself why is it that you chose that exam, or any other goal for that matter. Everyday psychology behind wanting something can stem from one of three things: Materialistic gains, Result oriented fulfillment or competitive aspirations. Or, it can be a deadly concoction of all three.

This often berated statement “Arrey suna hai Sharma ji ke bete ne IIT crack kar liya, uski toh zindagi set ho gayi” (the neighbour’s son has cracked the tough engineering entrance exam and his life is set) generally points out how goals provide life’s materialistic “settlement”. And, not just that, it can be as rudimentary as the salary of Verma ji ka beta (the neighbor’s son) or the IAS exam he cracks to get comparative acknowledgement from society. We see these people with these achievements and decide automatically “We want that too!!”

The kid next door that practices football every day and manages to balance academics with it, or, the school topper that chose science because she was a ‘model student’? Seeing people around us doing everything that we can only imagine to do, makes us think out aloud – “We want to be like them”

So what about you? What is it that drives YOU to embark on any journey or set any goal? And what happens when you don’t achieve it?

Attitude towards failure

Naturally, all hell breaks loose when you don’t achieve your goals. Everyone copes with it differently, but most of us have this three-step attitude towards failure: Expediting gloom, expounding anger and venting out frustration. The difference comes in what happens next, as 80% of us DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO, and the remaining 20% try again. Some of the latter 20% attain success, for they are what we call a success story. They become your 1st generation Tatas, Ambanis and the list goes on.

Most of us have heard about this cliche: “success ke peeche nahi, excellence ke peechey bhaago, success jhakk maarke tumhara peecha karegi” (run after excellence and not after success so that success runs after you). We accept it as the real motto of those around us, who seem to ‘just get it all right’. I, however, would like to rid the less fortunate ones among us, of that misconception.

Related Read: Overcoming Mental Health Issues

Enjoy Failure: The Secret of Success

The people around us who achieve success is not just because they give their 200% effort to achieve excellence. I mean that not this is not a pre-requisite to attaining what you want. However, one of the most crucial things that they consider before giving that goal their all is, whether or not they actually enjoy doing it. And if it is all about being a model student and taking science, then that’s, that.

They do it, and not because they want to be a topper or something, but because they ENJOY IT. Yes, the most painstaking part of any journey is already won, if you do what you do, not because you WANT something, but, because you enjoy  the means to reach that goal or here, the means to become a topper.

Because no matter how hard you try, or, however hard you convince yourself that the goal is worth it, most of the times, a result-oriented approach fails.  I’m not saying that it never succeeds, because it does and we see it all around us. But, when that happens, the happiness vanishes quite as easily as the decision to embark upon that journey. And, you then chase another result, which is not bad in itself. However, if you don’t enjoy the process of attaining those results, there will definitely be a time when you exhaust yourself, or you fail. That’s when the endless cycle of depression sets in, which most of us failures face.

So now, the question is how to handle failures?

How to handle failure?

Remember how we talked about the three step attitude towards failure? That is usually the first and the most inevitable stage wherein you curse everything and everyone alike. At first, you’re sad you couldn’t make it and blame yourself. Then, your focus shifts and you blame everything and everyone from the circumstances to all the people who achieved what you wanted. Everything seems nasty, and finally, you take it out on whomever and whatever you can find.

And that’s where you need to pause, you need to re-align yourself and rethink; not about the goal, but your approach to achieve it. And so the second stage begins and here is how to deal with failure:

How to deal with failure in 4 Steps:

Step 1: RETHINK

Ask yourself why you set about that journey, and I think I’ve done that quite a painful number of times, so you can save yourself that pain and move on to the second step.

Step 2: CONSIDER

Was what you did really worth your while? Did you actually enjoy doing the process or the work that you put in? Or, was it some external influence that got you on that path? Maybe some XYZ uncle that provided external inspiration or some ‘career counselling’ workshop that ‘really opened your eyes backed with authentic metric analysis’? Think about it, was what you thought of, really your own dream?  Because at this point there’s only two things you can do: start about the journey again, or move to the next step.

Related Read: Mental Health: Top 10 Questions To Ask Yourself For A Dipstick Diagnosis

Step 3: RECONSIDER

Choose something appropriately, ask yourself whether you’ll choose your next goal because you want some material gain, or, simply because it’s something you really like? And depending on the answer, we have our fourth and final step.

Related Read : Art of Self Love: Ways to love yourself ; How to deal with self doubt and self hate

Step 4: ENJOY

Yes, whatever it is that you choose, enjoy it. And trust me, it might seem like a joke, but to a lot of people the words ‘hard work’ really don’t go well with ‘enjoy’. But unless, you make sure that there is no ‘motivating force’ other than your own determination to enjoy what you’re doing and gain experience whilst doing so, there are high chances that you fail. Added to that, if you put in your 100% effort into it, then there’s no stopping you from achieving what you want.

Success is not the key to happiness; happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.       

Albert Schweitzer

Continue Your Journey: Enjoy Failure!

And about those of you, who at each step considered your chosen goal to be something that you really enjoyed; well, I don’t see why there should be any problem in your case. What I mean is that, since you really enjoyed every step of the journey, then how would it matter how many times it takes for you to reach that goal? Maybe you’d like to go about it again and do whatever it takes? And if that doesn’t work, you either need to put in more effort, or the goal really isn’t for you. But rest assured, if you do come to the second conclusion, then you’re one of us relentless chasers and hopeless liars.

Yours Sincerely,
Another Influenced Failure.

Related Read: FTEM’s Approach to Failure, How to deal with adversity

About The Author

Hansika Singh is a cognitive outlier who likes to fail and then learn. She fancies paving her own way to providence. She is fueled by passion, novels and coffee and likes to write her story each blog at a time.

She also enjoys dancing and is a curious person.