Ep 66 – Qs to reflect on when dealing with failure

Failure is the hardest thing for any of us to encounter. Ego takes a hit, so does our self-esteem, and self-confidence. We also feel several deep rooted emotions like guilt, shame, and regret, that make coping from failure even harder.

Today we are going to explore failure and how we can reflect and recover from experiencing a failure.

Failure is subjective. We each have our definitions of what failures are given our expectations from our situations and our past experiences and conditioning. But one thing is common, no one enjoys experiencing failure, especially one in the eyes of the public.

We start blaming ourselves, or others for our perils and find ways to remain in this feeling of failure. We allow emotions like guilt “I should/shouldnt have done this” or worse shame “I’m a horrible person or how can I be so so stupid” and stay stuck in these negative emotions.

But failure is not really the end of the world as we know it. A life without failures is not really a life at all. That means we stayed within our comfort zones and never had the courage to try something new. So if you’ve experienced failure, pat yourself in the back for your effort, and learn your lessons and move on. Here are some questions you can reflect on if you’ve recently experienced failure:

1. What really went wrong? Empathetically explore what happened and try to identify the truth behind the failure. Make sure to not let emotions steer the wheel of this reflection. Otherwise emotions like guilt and shame will keep you stuck in failure without allowing you to move on. So ask yourself with self-compassion what really went wrong and how you can avoid it in the future.
2. Ask what questions not why. Have you ever noticed how why questions keep you stuck in the same loop forever. We keep blaming ourselves or others and never really get around to learning our lessons and taking timely corrective actions. So ask yourself what went wrong? What could you have done better? What have you learned from this experience?
3. Is there someone who’s opinion you trust? Seek feedback from an objective third party. This helps in gaining a non-partisan view and makes it easier to take corrective actions.
4. What gift have I received because of this failure? I often see failure as a wake up call. I realise every time I’ve failed I’ve learned something. But only if I look at the failure and try and see what I can take from it does the failure turn into a gift. So ask yourself what can you learn from this experience that you could not have learned any other way.

Deep dive on these aspects the next time you experience failure and find answers within! If you’d like more 1:1 support with me as your Coach, reach out to me for a 30 min discovery session and let’s explore if self-awareness coaching can help you look inwards, assimilate your learnings and rebuild an even more resilient future yourself.