Mental Health 101

Failure and how to deal with it

Ahh...failure ..who isn't acquainted with that?                                                                                                          And if you say, you are not, you are lying. Everybody manages to fail at some point of their live. The driving test, school exams, a presentation gone wrong, not being there when your friend needed you, picking the wrong colour or even just taking the wrong direction. We are confronted with it in our daily lifes and what does that tell us? Exactly. That it's perfectly normal to fail. 

So first things first. Is failure bad? No, it is not. It helps us to learn from our mistakes and to improve, get better. So what we have to do is not to cry or whine about our failure, which might be the first instinct and is not bad at all, it's good to let it all out, but after a while we should learn from it. And I don't mean that after betrayal, you should never trust again or that after failing an exam, you should not even try, because it's all helpless anyways. All that can show us that we are stronger than we thought, doesn't it? After all we are still here. Right at this moment. So there is no need to worry to much, somehow we will figure this out, but not just by sitting and waiting for it to happen itself. We actually have to something. 

So if you learned a lot for this exam and still managed to fail and that isn't the first time it happended, you might should reconsider your learning style. Maybe you could try to find another way to approach the subject by watching a documentary about it, presenting it to one of your parents or even just write it all down.  If you failed in a relationship...think about it. Was it realistic for it to last? Was/Were he/she/they holding you back? Do you have some issues you need to sort out first, before you can commit to a relationship? And that's just one of many examples and questions we could ask ourselves.

The important thing is that we don't start thinking of us as a failure. One mistake doesn't define us and we still got many times we're gonna fail ahead of us. So why make it any more difficult than it already is. Take this opportunity. Become stronger, more determined and don't give up. That's just a basic thing to say, but remember: you are not your faults, you are not your lowest moments. But you are your future decisions and the way how you will react to this will shape you and your path. Don't beat yourself up and think of it as a chance to learn something new. To grow, to expand and to change something.