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How to stop feeling like a failure: Success and failure – two big terms coined long ago continue to affect our lives on a daily basis. Before I delve into the question of how to stop feeling like a failure, I’d like to ask you to define what failure and success mean to you. Both these terms are personal and have a different meaning depending on who you ask. For some, getting low scores in an exam might be a failure but for others, it could be about bankruptcy.

With such large differences, the bottom line of the difference between success and failure is based on our standards and definitions of these terms. If at any point in time, you feel like a failure, stop and ask yourself a few questions

• Is this an irreversible result?
• What are the worst impacts – can I recover from this?
• Is it a delay or a denial for my goals?

As you can see, this is about objectively analysing what the failure means to you. Following that, you can define your steps on how to stop feeling like a failure.

How to stop feeling like a failure – Meaning

Don’t fall into the trap of the society or your peers telling you that you are a failure. These things are extremely personal and you shouldn’t be driven by someone else. Failures are nothing but you falling from your own standards – no matter what they are. The moment you realise that you’re falling below your standards, you need to stop and take stock.

Key questions to ask are:

• Are these standards realistic?
• Do they help you to continually grow or bring you down?
• Most importantly do they allow progress and happiness?

I’d refrain from talking about perfection. As you already know, I’m not a big fan of perfection and go on to argue that perfection is a bad goal to have. You can trade this for progress to achieve better results from life. In effect, define what happiness means to you so that you have a fair goal to aim towards.

Once you know what your success and failure definitions are, you are well set to analyse your outcomes and plan next steps. I will now pivot this article into some feel good factors to stop preventing you from feeling like a failure. Most of these steps by nature are purposed to be productive – they might not always work, but will give you a great chance of creating a habit of better emotional management.

Managing the emotion of feeling like a failure

This section is about how to stop feeling like a failure. As much as the media or advertising industry tells you that getting over failure is easy, it is not. Managing failure is about creating a new habit instead of lying to yourself that buying a new car/house or even a career will fix. These might give you a momentary joy, but not help you prevent what you feel inside. Dealing with failure is about acknowleding what your emotions are telling you to find a constructive solution to feel better.

I’ll go back to the basics that these emotions are trying to tell you something or send a message. Your best bet is to listen to these emotions, understand and react accordingly. The more you try to mask these feelings, you will end up in short term results which will hurt you more in the future. In the short term however, you can do any of the below to try and channel your feelings into a productive environment

Distraction – Physical Exertion

One of the classic tools to deal with intense emotions is distraction/deflection. It will be wrong to treat this as a permanent solution but only a way to channel your energies to understand the meaning. To stop feeling like failure, just running will not solve all problems. But, it will help you channel your energies.

In this instance, although I’m calling running a distraction, it is a tool to help you focus your energies. It might sound depressing and sad when you feel like a failure. But even that is a source of energy and demand. You might not feel overjoyed to go out for a run, but go for a walk instead. Any physical activity which can get you moving can engage a physiological action which in turn can help you start engaging your brain and mind.

Listening to Music

One of the most powerful influencers for me in how to stop feeling like a failure is listening to good music. Although my introduction to music while feeling sad was listening to heartbreak songs – I realise that it only intensified my sad emotions. Instead, I now focus on songs with good, upbeat music which can help these emotions raise up from a melancholic mood.

Remember, that you’re listening to music to feel better rather than continue feeling like a failure and sad about yourself. It can be a good tool to motivate you and engage your thoughts in a solution frame rather than overthinking about your problem and feeling worse about your situation.

Meeting people

I’m sure you’re beginning to recognize a theme in this article. Most activities suggested are the ones which we don’t normally feel like doing when feeling like a failure. This is precisely why it is important to challenge our mind from our stock responses.

If you keep doing the same things, you get the same results. The same is true with your emotions too. Being lonley can be dangerous at times when you keep asking yourself – how to stop feeling like a failure. Instead, go out and meet people – not the ones who show you sympathy but the ones who normalise your situation. Failures are normal, they are only a part of your success journey. Listen to podcasts or interviews where people openly talk about these failures and how they managed to come out of it. Your journey is not alone, there are thousands of people in the world going through the same.

Asking better questions – Instead of Why me to what can I do

The base of all our emotions are the questions we ask ourselves. If you find yourself thinking – why does this always happen to me – you will find awful answers. Most of these questions give you answers such as – you are a fool, incompetent or blame your surroundings. Although they might have contributed, these reasons don’t give you the results you’re after.

Instead, focus on what you can learn from this experience. How can you use this in the future to benefit you? Why me is an awful line of thought which will destroy your frame of mind and gives you no positive results. If you want to stop feeling like a failure, find a better solution framework. Ask better questions so that you can find a good quality of answers.

Own your success and failure

This is the last tip on how to stop feeling like a failure. All your experiences are your very own – whether they are successes or failures. Your actions at any point in time are the culmination of your knowledge, experience and hard work at that point in time. If you look back at your results, you may feel that you could’ve tackled it differently. But this is nothing but hindsight.

Wisdom comes from experience and experience is lack of wisdom. You ought to apply the same principle to success and failure. Don’t punish yourself needlessly with things that did not work out – you’re doing a great disservice to yourself by punishing your past which has moved on to the present. Instead, just fixate on your current moment and the future. Your thoughts live in the moments which you encourage them to.

They will live in the past and continue to haunt you if you let them. You must find a way to coach your thoughts and think about the best way to manage your feelings of failure. They don’t give you immediate results but coaching a new habit can make you start thinking about how to start intelligently again after a failure.

Ultimately success lies in allowing yourself opportunities to start and face life for all its glory. What is wrong will always be available and so will be what’s right. We ought to define where our loyalties lie for our thoughts.