How do you recover from failure? You’ve probably asked yourself this question 100 times after a significant disappointment in your life. The answer is not always easy, especially when you’re dealing with regrets, guilt, and trying to keep your sanity about yourself.
You know how good it feels to have your life on track and to be heading in the right direction. Moving forward feels excellent, and wouldn’t it be nice if your entire life was about sunshine and pleasant days? The problem is, how do you bring yourself from the brink of destruction to living a whole and productive life again?
Nine Tips to Recover from Failure and Become Stronger Than Ever
Do you feel like your heart is broken and shattered in two? Waking in the morning brings another day of tears and fears, but it doesn’t have to be this way. A wise philosopher once said that it’s not how many times in your life that you fall, but it’s the times that you pick yourself up again that counts. Here are nine tips to help you recover and emerge better than before.
1. Identify What Needs Fixing
Before you can begin to repair the damage done to your heart, you need to identify what needs to be fixed. If you call a plumber out for a leak in your ceiling, they must first identify the source of trouble. So, just like the plumber, you need to assess your damages.
Find out where the problems are coming from, which will enable you to tackle this area of your life. If you find that your issues come from the people in your inner circle, you need new friends. Write a list of the things that are the cause or hindering your recovery and get to work.
2. Check Your Attitude
If you have children, you’re very familiar with telling them to check their attitude. However, adults need an attitude check on occasion too. Just because you’ve grown and had all these responsibilities doesn’t mean you’re perfect.
If you have a good attitude, then you’ll have a positive outlook on life. However, if your attitude is poor, then so will your view be. You may start off feeling great in the morning and be all smiles, but one disgruntled customer at work can send your mood spiraling downward.
It takes a lot of effort not to let the cares of life consume you. However, you must check your attitude if you want to recover from failure.
3. See a Counselor
Sometimes, you need a little help. Whatever failure you’ve experienced has, no doubt, had a significant impact on you. A counselor is a person who can help you weed through the mess without passing judgment.
Often, when you ask your friends or relatives for help, they tend to be biased toward the situation. It would help if you had someone who looks at you and the circumstances without judgment. Plus, counselors need many years of schooling to handle people with anxiety, depression, mental illness, and failures in life.
Additionally, you don’t want those closest to you to know all your secrets. Sometimes, it’s best if no one knows the things you battle, especially if they can use them against you later.
4. Remove Temptations
Let’s assume that you need to lose 25 pounds and have been dieting. You’ve failed miserably at your weigh-in with the doctor, and you’ve gained weight. The failure of thinking you’ll always be heavy is getting you down, and you don’t know what to do differently.
However, after assessing the situation, you find that your home is full of temptations. You gained weight because you couldn’t resist the snacks that are all around you. When you decided to go on a diet, you didn’t clean out your cabinets.
During moments of weakness, you binged on anything sugary you could find. Now, relate this story to your situation. What temptations are causing you to stumble?
Maybe you have a failed relationship that’s broken your heart into pieces. However, you refuse to remove them from social media, out of the contacts on your phone, and from your life. If you never remove the temptations that bind you, then you will never be able to move on from this failure.
5. Decide A Plan of Action
When a person goes to the doctor and has cancer, their medical team will devise a treatment plan. Since you cannot cure cancer or any other illness overnight, they implement steps towards recovery. It would help if you did the same thing by devising a list to help you mend it.
You started by identifying the issues you need to work on; now, it’s time to put a plan in place. Get out a paper and a pen and start making goals. You will feel so much better once you start crossing things off your list.
6. Remember You Can and Will Get Through This
Your mindset is an important part of the recovery process. Remember the story of the Little Engine That Could? The little engine was responsible for pulling a big load up a hill. However, the people around him kept telling him the load was too heavy and there was no way he could pull it up that massive mountain.
However, the little engine didn’t pay attention to all the naysayers, and he kept telling himself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” The more he repeated this positive affirmation, the more his self-confidence grew. Once he reached the top of the hill, he changed his affirmation to “I knew I could.”
Simply put, you can do anything you set your mind to do. Keep telling yourself, no matter how big the mountain or uncrossable it seems, “I think I can.”
7. Figure Out Where You Want to Go
You know where you’ve been, but you need to figure out where you want to go. If you’re going to recover from failure, then you must visualize yourself in a new place. Where do you see yourself in one month, one year, or five years from now?
A vision board is a great tool to help you see yourself moving from point A to B. These boards can help you get unstuck and remind you each day of your goals and dreams. Indeed, the mind has incredible power over the body.
A simple visual aid can help you to improve your motivation, self-efficiency, and overall outlook on life. Remember, there are no rules with these boards, so you can’t mess it up.
8. Figure Out What Got You Off Track
It’s essential to figure out what got you off track in the first place. Maybe you laid down cigarettes five years ago, but after your mother passed away, you suddenly picked up this bad habit again. You conquered this habit once so that you can do it again.
The problem in this situation is that you’re self-medicating for the pain of your loss. Cigarettes make you feel good, and the buzz of nicotine helps your stress. Did you know that many people fail because they have an underlying mental illness that needs to be addressed?
If you want to recover from failure and get back on track, you may need to tackle the underlying reason, even if it involved your mental or physical health. Once you conquer these issues, it will be easier for you to stay on track.
9. Seek the Help of a Mentor
A counselor and mentor are two very different people. One is a medically trained professional with tips and tricks, but a mentor is usually someone who has been in similar situations. Don’t ever confuse the need for both advocates in your life.
Mentors have already conquered the same battle you face. For instance, it’s prevalent for those seeking recovery from drugs and alcohol to have a mentor. It can mean everything to their recovery process.
Made Mentoring is an agency that helps thousands of people in Los Angeles, California. The basis for this company started with two men sitting in recovery themselves. Corbett Miller and Kevin Lewis both had mental health issues and drug addictions, but they found themselves together in rehab.
Their experiences were life-changing, and they both wanted to help other young men get on the right path. They started the organization to show people that you can create a life worth living, and you don’t need drugs or alcohol to have fun.
Final Thoughts on How to Recover from Failure
Failure hurts, and it can leave you down for the count. However, change your mindset about the process of failing. If you want to grow and change, you must fall a few times.
If you do everything perfectly the first time, then there’s no reason for you to have any life lessons. Most people can’t stand the rain because it blocks the sun, but the flowers and gardens cannot thrive without this refreshing drink from the heavens. The rain will pass, and the sun will shine again.
Just as the seasons of nature change, so do the ones in your life. The good news is that you can make a massive difference by doing some things on this list. You can recover from failure; tell yourself, “I think I can, I think I can.”
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