5 Ways To Pick Yourself Up After Failure

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” –Henry Ford

All you have to do is pick yourself up, even when it feels like it's impossible to do so. Here are 5 ways to get up and start again after failure:

Take time to grieve

Failure can have a similar emotional impact as losing someone or something important to you. Just like with that kind of loss, you need time to grieve after failing. Mourning the loss of whatever you were working on or trying to achieve will help you work through the negative emotions that come with failure.

While it’s normal to feel angry or confused, and to try to shift blame during the grieving process, it’s also important that you don’t dwell too much on what you’ve lost and instead, focus on getting to the acceptance stage. From that point, you’ll be able to start healing and moving on.

Forgive yourself

The best thing you can do after failing something is to forgive yourself. The self compassion will make you feel better and stop you from constantly punishing yourself with negative thoughts that only serve to make you feel worse about what you didn’t achieve.

Forgiveness is a crucial step in the process of moving on and it needs to be a clean break. Once you decide to let go of whatever you feel you might have done wrong, resulting in your failure, it needs to be a complete absolution.

Look for the lesson in the failure

A good strategy in the face of failure is not asking yourself why something bad happened to you, but rather what it’s teaching you. This approach teaches you to look for the bright side even in the worst of times.

When you analyze whatever you failed at, it can help you identify where you went wrong or what you might have done better. Those lessons will act as a guideline towards doing better on your next try.

Set new goals

Now that you know what didn’t work, you can move on by setting new goals based on the lessons you’ve learned. Make sure you write them down as vividlyas possible and also make a plan for achieving them.

A useful approach is setting SMART goals, which some studies show can be a good way to ensure success. Having new goals also gives you something to look forward to and helps you forget past failures.

Be positive

Having a positive mindset will make you happier, healthier, and more confident.There are simple tactics you can try to nurture positivity, like practising gratitude and looking at the bright side in every situation.

Positivity is powerful enough to banish negative emotions, especially those brought on by failure. Once you master the art of being positive, you’ll be able to pick yourself up no matter how big a failure you’ve faced.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the endof the day saying ‘I will try again tomorrow’.” – Mary Anne Radmacher