7 best practices to better live your professional failures
Missing a competition, dropping out of school, failing to land a job or interview, regretting career choices, conflicting with supervisors or colleagues, not feeling up to work or not daring to change jobs ... so many experiences that punctuate the academic and professional and that we often equate to failures.
It is sometimes referred to as "accidents of course", as if they were anomalies. In fact, this type of experience, we are all brought to live during our professional life. They are just an inherent part of any journey, just like our successes.
Except that, obviously, we do not consider them in the same way. Our failures, we tend to dramatize them and give them more importance than our successes. The French culture is for something since since the school, we like to point the failures of the finger.
As a result, it is sometimes difficult to overcome these experiences of failure, to leave the negative dynamics in which they train us, to go ahead and to draw the right lessons.
We all have a range of emotions that are similar to the feeling of failure.
Feelings of helplessness: an impression of not having a hold on events, which leads to frustration, misunderstanding, even a feeling of injustice.
Loss of self-confidence: we tend to question our abilities, to self-denigrate (we say we are bad, mediocre, we deserve what happens to us ...)
Anger: we get angry with ourselves when we consider ourselves responsible for the situation and / or against others
Discouragement: when you can not get out of the situation of failure, you end up discouraged, give up. Lassitude goes hand in hand with a certain apathy and "aquoibonism".
Fear: to be wrong, what the future holds for us, to lose what we have. Failure can be a great source of stress, anxiety and insecurity.
Shame: we feel humiliated, rejected, judged by others and guilty of not being able to avoid the situation
Sadness that can go up to depression
Depending on the situation, you will be more vulnerable to certain emotions than others. For example, long-term unemployment often leads to loss of self-confidence, discouragement and shame; dismissal is more likely to cause feelings of injustice and anger.
That said, even if the emotions are often the same, everyone lives the failure differently, depending on the issue that represents the situation but also his attitude to events. As much as we do not have a hold on the events, as much we have more than we believe on how to take things.
Yes ... consider failure as a teaching experience and good things, it is possible.
Here are some good practices that emerge from our failure night to foster resilience, better live professional failures and bounce faster
1. Accept the situation
Failure does not always depend on us. Some failures are suffered without a real hold on the situation. This is the case, for example, of an economic dismissal.
And yet, even in these situations one tends to feel guilty and to blame oneself or, conversely, to let oneself be invaded by the feeling of injustice.
To accept the situation is to welcome your emotions and to recognize that things are as they are, that we have not been able to prevent them from happening but that, on the other hand, we have the power to act on what follows. This is a first step that makes it easier to move on.
2. Take a step back
After a failure, a step of "digestion" more or less long is always necessary to be able to take a step back on the lived experience, and to adopt a more objective vision.
To live a failure is hurtful and vexing. We are faced with our limits and our weaknesses, sometimes to the point of becoming devalued.
It is important to try to detach oneself emotionally from failure and to let go in order to learn from them. Of course, this is not an easy thing, but we can imagine, for example, that it is a friend who is in our place and wonder what we would say to him, how we would perceive his situation, the positive elements we emphasize ...
3. Analyze the situation
Of course, we are anxious to leave failure behind and we do not always want to rethink it. But taking a little time to analyze the situation objectively is a good way to draw lessons for the future and avoid reliving it another time.
The idea is not to turn the situation in his head to end no end but to get down to the exercise once and for all and then put failure behind you.
What did not work?
What led to failure?
Did I lack knowledge
these or skills? Or preparation?
Did I want to please someone and I acted despite my desire?
Was the problem coming from the method used which was not adapted to the situation?
Or goals that I had set?
What is my share of responsibility? Did I make mistakes? Which ones?
When I should have done otherwise in theory, could I do it in practice? Now can I do it differently?
Did I just miss luck? It is simply a matter of recognizing one's wrongs but not of blaming oneself.
What could I have done to avoid the situation?
If today things took the same turn, could I do otherwise? How? 'Or' What ?
4. Do not stay alone
The risk after a failure is to 'lock yourself in' without getting out of it. It is all the more difficult to move forward if we constantly reiterate the same thoughts that reinforce our negative state of mind.
To talk with people outside the situation can be a real breath of fresh air and allow to relativize and change of view on what happened. Surround yourself with caring people, find "allies" to support you and help you move forward.
Discuss the situation with a person you trust: spouse, friends, colleagues ... Their eyes can help you relativize your failure, to perceive it differently.
How do they see the situation? Would they also call it a failure?
Be attentive to your way of telling the story. What kind of vocabulary do you use? Try to adopt the journalist's attitude: focus on the facts, in the most neutral and "scientific" way possible.
5. To regain self-confidence
One of the risks of failure is to lose confidence in one's potential, abilities or worth, especially when the situation lasts. Now, to start well can help to see more clearly for the future.
It is important not to get carried away by devaluation and to cultivate a certain benevolence towards oneself. One is often the most severe judge towards oneself, one sometimes says that being hard towards oneself, one will avoid to fail. In fact, it only reinforces the problem. Encourage yourself!
First, avoid generalizing. It's not because you have a failed experience that you are missing yourself or that you will miss all future experiences! Simply, in this situation and these specific circumstances, it did not work. Remember every time you have succeeded in the past.
Remember that failures, we all live and try to free you from the "what do we say" to emancipate you from the eyes of others.
Then, to restart the machine, go hunting for positive experiences. The principle is simple: to put in situations of pleasure and success. Start a new activity that makes you want, where you spend a little more time in your hobbies or things that bring you energy. Play sports, create a personal project next door, spend time with people who boost you ...
You can also seek to develop your skills through volunteering, participating in workshops, trainings, MOOCs, reading books, etc.
6. Refocus on oneself
After an experience of failure, it's a good time to refocus on yourself and put this period of questioning into profit.
To begin, take time to take care of yourself. You can give yourself a few days of vacation, take a break, go breathe in the forest ...
Bend over yourself to learn to know yourself better and accept yourself better. Think about your qualities, take stock of your past successes, even the small things.
It will also allow you to talk better about yourself, to present yourself in your true face, to find a thread to tell your story to interlocutors who will be more receptive.
7. Act, go forward
Following a failure, we sometimes tend to be demoralized and overcome by passivity. This is all the more true if we have already tried several things to get out of the situation without success (for example, in the case of long-term unemployment). After a while, we are tempted to give up.
One can also be paralyzed by the fear of reliving a failure that leads us to no longer dare to attempt anything.
The best way to regain envy and energy is ... to act.
Try new things, innovate in your actions to overcome the situation. Sometimes a "renewal" can be beneficial: change of scenery, environment, relationships, etc. Keep a proactive attitude to opportunities.
Provoke interesting meetings with professionals in your field or other areas that interest you: participate in meet up, conferences ...
Listen to your intuition. When one experiences a situation of failure, it is sometimes difficult to find the right moment to "change". We oscillate between persevering to try to "save" the situation or move on to something else at the risk of not finding better. Your instinct is often a good indicator of when to act and where to start. Start small, test small things without major consequences to get used to the action.
Failures are the seeds of our future successes - Françoise Kourilsky
Nobody really likes to fail. But if we consider these experiences of failure as an opportunity to progress, such as the opportunity to start something new, to adjust its trajectory, it is possible to experience failure more positively.
Because failure has its virtues. It allows us to question ourselves, to adopt new points of view, to take other roads, to experiment, to innovate, to learn. It is part of every learning process throughout life. Any child instinctively learns to walk by falling and standing up.
It is only after the fact that we will be able to recognize what a failure has allowed us to accomplish, by forcing us to change direction or to experience other experiences.
The challenge, after a failure, is to overcome this phase between two during which we do not always see how we will get out, while hosting this period of questioning and doubt. And then bounce! Because the feeling of failure is a signal, which informs us that something must change, is the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and to go to new things.
Except that, obviously, we do not consider them in the same way. Our failures, we tend to dramatize them and give them more importance than our successes. The French culture is for something since since the school, we like to point the failures of the finger.
As a result, it is sometimes difficult to overcome these experiences of failure, to leave the negative dynamics in which they train us, to go ahead and to draw the right lessons.
We all have a range of emotions that are similar to the feeling of failure.
Feelings of helplessness: an impression of not having a hold on events, which leads to frustration, misunderstanding, even a feeling of injustice.
Loss of self-confidence: we tend to question our abilities, to self-denigrate (we say we are bad, mediocre, we deserve what happens to us ...)
Anger: we get angry with ourselves when we consider ourselves responsible for the situation and / or against others
Discouragement: when you can not get out of the situation of failure, you end up discouraged, give up. Lassitude goes hand in hand with a certain apathy and "aquoibonism".
Fear: to be wrong, what the future holds for us, to lose what we have. Failure can be a great source of stress, anxiety and insecurity.
Shame: we feel humiliated, rejected, judged by others and guilty of not being able to avoid the situation
Sadness that can go up to depression
Depending on the situation, you will be more vulnerable to certain emotions than others. For example, long-term unemployment often leads to loss of self-confidence, discouragement and shame; dismissal is more likely to cause feelings of injustice and anger.
That said, even if the emotions are often the same, everyone lives the failure differently, depending on the issue that represents the situation but also his attitude to events. As much as we do not have a hold on the events, as much we have more than we believe on how to take things.
Yes ... consider failure as a teaching experience and good things, it is possible.
Here are some good practices that emerge from our failure night to foster resilience, better live professional failures and bounce faster
1. Accept the situation
Failure does not always depend on us. Some failures are suffered without a real hold on the situation. This is the case, for example, of an economic dismissal.
And yet, even in these situations one tends to feel guilty and to blame oneself or, conversely, to let oneself be invaded by the feeling of injustice.
To accept the situation is to welcome your emotions and to recognize that things are as they are, that we have not been able to prevent them from happening but that, on the other hand, we have the power to act on what follows. This is a first step that makes it easier to move on.
2. Take a step back
After a failure, a step of "digestion" more or less long is always necessary to be able to take a step back on the lived experience, and to adopt a more objective vision.
To live a failure is hurtful and vexing. We are faced with our limits and our weaknesses, sometimes to the point of becoming devalued.
It is important to try to detach oneself emotionally from failure and to let go in order to learn from them. Of course, this is not an easy thing, but we can imagine, for example, that it is a friend who is in our place and wonder what we would say to him, how we would perceive his situation, the positive elements we emphasize ...
3. Analyze the situation
Of course, we are anxious to leave failure behind and we do not always want to rethink it. But taking a little time to analyze the situation objectively is a good way to draw lessons for the future and avoid reliving it another time.
The idea is not to turn the situation in his head to end no end but to get down to the exercise once and for all and then put failure behind you.
What led to failure?
Did I lack knowledge
these or skills? Or preparation?
Did I want to please someone and I acted despite my desire?
Was the problem coming from the method used which was not adapted to the situation?
Or goals that I had set?
What is my share of responsibility? Did I make mistakes? Which ones?
When I should have done otherwise in theory, could I do it in practice? Now can I do it differently?
Did I just miss luck? It is simply a matter of recognizing one's wrongs but not of blaming oneself.
What could I have done to avoid the situation?
If today things took the same turn, could I do otherwise? How? 'Or' What ?
4. Do not stay alone
The risk after a failure is to 'lock yourself in' without getting out of it. It is all the more difficult to move forward if we constantly reiterate the same thoughts that reinforce our negative state of mind.
To talk with people outside the situation can be a real breath of fresh air and allow to relativize and change of view on what happened. Surround yourself with caring people, find "allies" to support you and help you move forward.
Discuss the situation with a person you trust: spouse, friends, colleagues ... Their eyes can help you relativize your failure, to perceive it differently.
How do they see the situation? Would they also call it a failure?
Be attentive to your way of telling the story. What kind of vocabulary do you use? Try to adopt the journalist's attitude: focus on the facts, in the most neutral and "scientific" way possible.
5. To regain self-confidence
One of the risks of failure is to lose confidence in one's potential, abilities or worth, especially when the situation lasts. Now, to start well can help to see more clearly for the future.
It is important not to get carried away by devaluation and to cultivate a certain benevolence towards oneself. One is often the most severe judge towards oneself, one sometimes says that being hard towards oneself, one will avoid to fail. In fact, it only reinforces the problem. Encourage yourself!
First, avoid generalizing. It's not because you have a failed experience that you are missing yourself or that you will miss all future experiences! Simply, in this situation and these specific circumstances, it did not work. Remember every time you have succeeded in the past.
Remember that failures, we all live and try to free you from the "what do we say" to emancipate you from the eyes of others.
Then, to restart the machine, go hunting for positive experiences. The principle is simple: to put in situations of pleasure and success. Start a new activity that makes you want, where you spend a little more time in your hobbies or things that bring you energy. Play sports, create a personal project next door, spend time with people who boost you ...
You can also seek to develop your skills through volunteering, participating in workshops, trainings, MOOCs, reading books, etc.
6. Refocus on oneself
After an experience of failure, it's a good time to refocus on yourself and put this period of questioning into profit.
To begin, take time to take care of yourself. You can give yourself a few days of vacation, take a break, go breathe in the forest ...
Bend over yourself to learn to know yourself better and accept yourself better. Think about your qualities, take stock of your past successes, even the small things.
It will also allow you to talk better about yourself, to present yourself in your true face, to find a thread to tell your story to interlocutors who will be more receptive.
7. Act, go forward
Following a failure, we sometimes tend to be demoralized and overcome by passivity. This is all the more true if we have already tried several things to get out of the situation without success (for example, in the case of long-term unemployment). After a while, we are tempted to give up.
The best way to regain envy and energy is ... to act.
Try new things, innovate in your actions to overcome the situation. Sometimes a "renewal" can be beneficial: change of scenery, environment, relationships, etc. Keep a proactive attitude to opportunities.
Provoke interesting meetings with professionals in your field or other areas that interest you: participate in meet up, conferences ...
Listen to your intuition. When one experiences a situation of failure, it is sometimes difficult to find the right moment to "change". We oscillate between persevering to try to "save" the situation or move on to something else at the risk of not finding better. Your instinct is often a good indicator of when to act and where to start. Start small, test small things without major consequences to get used to the action.
Failures are the seeds of our future successes - Françoise Kourilsky
Nobody really likes to fail. But if we consider these experiences of failure as an opportunity to progress, such as the opportunity to start something new, to adjust its trajectory, it is possible to experience failure more positively.
Because failure has its virtues. It allows us to question ourselves, to adopt new points of view, to take other roads, to experiment, to innovate, to learn. It is part of every learning process throughout life. Any child instinctively learns to walk by falling and standing up.
The challenge, after a failure, is to overcome this phase between two during which we do not always see how we will get out, while hosting this period of questioning and doubt. And then bounce! Because the feeling of failure is a signal, which informs us that something must change, is the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and to go to new things.
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