Coping With Failure

By Jayaram V

This article is incomplete. To read the complete article you may purchase the book Think Success now available in two volumes

FAILURE VERSUS SUCCESS

Nothing strikes us more hurtfully than failure. Especially, in case of people with poor self-esteem and low self-confidence, the pain and fear associated with failure is much more serious, damaging and debilitating. It can have a lasting and crippling effect.

Failure prevents many from being true to their potential and realizing their cherished dreams. Concerned as we are with success and survival, living in a competitive world that worships winners and castigates losers, even people with normal self esteem tend to react to failure negatively, with feelings of despair, depression, inadequacy, incompetence and loss of self-esteem. Unless there is a paradigm shift in our thinking, we will continue to rejoice at our successes and cringe at the very thought of our failures.

Since success and failure are inseparable from our lives, as long as we are engaged in some professional activity or the other, we have to find healthy ways to deal with our failures to keep working at our goals and realize our dreams.

KNOW THAT YOU CAN DEAL WITH FAILURE

You may not have the confidence to admit, but you have the ability to deal with any failure or problem in your life. Confidence is the key. If you have confidence in yourself and in your abilities, you can overcome any failure in your life. However tough it may be, no problem is insurmountable to human intelligence. You can deal with every failure in a positive, intelligent and decisive ways. You have the power, you have the skills and you have the strength to confront your failures and minimize their impact upon your life and actions, just as you can manage any situation in your life, with right effort and right frame of mind.

You can overcome failure with optimism, objectivity, awareness and sense of responsibility, before it consumes you with its raw force of negativity and makes you feel hopeless and helpless. With simple commonsense, you can find solutions to the problems that are holding you down and preventing you from realizing your goals.

There may be times in your life, when you feel defeated, ignored or neglected. But they would not last long, unless you succumb to your fears and worries. The best way to deal with failure is to treat it like any other problem, which needs to be understood and resolved rationally, not emotionally...