What We Learn From Failure

We can learn a lot and fail gracefully.

Or we can learn little and feel like failures, internalizing an unsuccessful action we attempted, turning this into part of our self-perception.

We may simply learn not to repeat something we view as a mistake, but if our concept of self is already negative, we may actually incorporate avoidance behavior in order to shy away from attempting a failed action we have internalized and, consequently, have become afraid of failing at a second time.

This is the hard part - the CRITICAL THINKING part...

If we use our critical thinking skills to determine WHICH PART(s) about a failed activity or effort hold the key to why 'it did not work,' then we can often keep from internalizing and incorporating failure into our personal self image.

Sometimes things do not work because we forgot to evaluate the chances of success in an action before we ever engaged in the action. Often, our 'delivery' of an action, from the start, is not planned well. Rashness and impulsiveness leading into something that has consequences (and almost everything in life DOES have consequences, causes and effects, that we can usually only understand with hindsight) can be the deciding factor between the effect we expect and the effect that actually happens. If we blame ourselves afterward - without checking 'hindsight' first, this is where a huge problem with internalizing and feeling like a failure can appear.

For instance, if you know your father has an unshakable belief of a certain kind and you believe differently, the chances that you will change your father's mind over to your beliefs are quite shaky.

If you engage in discussion with your father, then...to attempt to persuade him that, say, The Mighty Ducks are a rotten hockey team and he should root for the Toronto Maple Leafs, this is not good reasoning (providing you are serious about these things, of course, and not just getting into good-natured sports-talk banter). If you expect he will actually be won over to your side and become a Maple Leafs fan, you are far behind in the game already by the way you approach the issue.

You might, however, have a chance of having a DISCUSSION with your father about the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses of each team, even though you clearly have different tastes. It would be ultimately better to have a successful discussion of this sort, rather than a polar opposite attempt to win your father over to your beliefs.

In this, both of your viewpoints could be honoured and nobody need walk away feeling like anyone was entirely wrong or definitely right.

You likely won't walk away, having scrapped with your father, either, resulting in feeling like you failed to win your father over to your viewpoint.

This is just a minor illustration, using a somewhat trivial example - most people do, in fact, enjoy talking about sports. At the same time, when people approach discussions on sports topics and they hold very strong viewpoints about their sport teams and are very dedicated fans, people also can get involved in extremely escalated arguments, too!

It happens both ways. You CAN decide which way you want it even before you 'pick your battle,' so to speak.

I used a 'communication' example because communication is something everyone is required to do with each other in life. It is also something that has a profound effect on people in both positive and negative ways. Depending on reasonable approaches and a number of other factors, even people who have previously felt like 'a failure' can burst out of this kind of thinking and use 'failure' of actions and situations - to their strong advantage.

Words are powerful and are often used without the prerequisite of mindfulness. Many a person has been emotionally hurt coming out of a discussion that went all wrong. Depending on the perception of the situation as well as self-perception, one can feel like a failure at the end of an argument one believes he or she 'did not win.'

Know yourself before engaging in activities that have a win-lose eventuality.

For instance - a foot-race has an established winner. SOME PEOPLE say that foot-races also have an established LOSER at the end of the race.

Stop paying attention to the latter, because the foot-race is ultimately and really about running at your best and giving the race your best effort under the situations you're under at the time of the race.

After the race, talk inwardly to yourself, saying,

* "I Ran my best it was a good race."

versus

* "I am a loser because Jimmy won the foot-race instead of me!"

The words "I AM" are very powerful. Make sure any words about your perception of self that follow "I AM" are POSITIVE IN NATURE!

Even when you have a bad day, you can override some fairly uncomfortable feelings by internalizing thoughts of "I AM (something positive)."

If we are able to do this often, our self-image is often strong and quite positive, so that failures - failed attempts at doing tasks - can be easily turned into strengths.

If we consistently pick 'bad battles,' it is much harder for us to gain positive results that we expect. Out of frustration, we can lose sight of 'positive self-talk' as a healthy task to do for ourselves and we can start to allow negative internalization of things again.

If we decide the causes for failed events/actions is always US then we need to really take the time to evaluate whether this is actually true or not.

For Instance, if you meet with your boss regularly for a weekly inventory or other kind of check and your boss is regularly in a very sour mood on this day, you might assume that it is because you make your boss angry and sour. You may internalize and tell yourself all kinds of things that are not as pertinent in this situation as you THINK they are. You may start feeling like your boss dislikes you or any of a number of things.

It really could just be that on Thursday afternoons, at this regular meeting time, your boss has already put in 'meeting time' with 5 other people - Thursday is the 'meeting' day that he or she decided was necessary for business.

If this is the case and you are NOT the issue, of course your boss will be cranky by the time he or she gets around to meeting #6 with YOU!

In this, you can still 'pick your battle,' by keeping your confidence up, keeping your conversations and anything to do with business as concise but detailed as necessary, and by NOT INTERNALIZING negative qualities and behaviors your boss seems to be displaying.

* Edison failed numerous times in his experimentation

Edison still gave us the light bulb.

* Einstein failed at academics (Mathematics!!) in grade school

Einstein gave us the Theory of Relativity and several other concepts in mathematics, physics - and even philosophy, which are still perpetuated today

Failure can tend toward making us work harder to achieve our goals and think critically about (mostly) external issues that prevent us from reaching an intended result.

Failure can help us become very good problem-solvers

Failure has to be externalized then examined in order to be useful to us.

I failed to keep this short but I'm sure I wrote a good hub that I am pleased with.

:)