Afraid of Failure? 4 Steps to Breaking Down Failure

Have you ever felt like a failure? I totally have. But I am not alone.

There is an epidemic of feelings of failure in our country. And failure is so definitive. When you think you failed, there is not much wiggle room to be anything other than “a failure.” A horrible way to see yourself! This becomes a belief ingrained and tainting everything else we do and try. Here are four ways to break it down.

Failure is in relation to something. Usually some standard or expectation that was not met: I am not thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough. Having unreasonable expectations is more detrimental on our health than anything else. It brings in judgment, which compounds every other problem we already have.

When we have a feeling which is appropriate to the situation, and then we judge ourselves, and worry, the problem becomes so much bigger and harder to recover from. Then, we berate ourselves for not recovering quickly–yet another layer of judgment. The original feeling is peanuts compared to the complex mess layers of judgment and fear add.

Don’t add them. Allow yourself to feel. Don’t worry, you can handle it. Be gentle and compassionate with yourself, lower those outrageous expectations! Instead of dwelling, do something.

Past feelings of failure attempt to take away our point to trying to feel better, accomplish something. We get convinced that we will fail anyway. We assume trying hard will make us more disappointed when we do actually fail, and so we put less effort in in hopes to protect our heart. With less effort, we may actually not achieve our goal and we can say “See? I always fail. Good thing I did not try.”

There is a point. Rarely is anything accomplished without trying. And if we try and don’t succeed, our heart actually feels better, not worse. We build confidence knowing that we did our best. We feel empowered because we can respond to things in life.

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