Simple steps to recover from failure

More than once in your life, you’ll experience some kind of failure: be it a breakup, a lay off, a betrayal, a refusal or whatever the form. In this situation we all react differently, but quite often people tend to feel miserable, depressed, pessimistic, apathetic. As I experienced one such situation last week, I’d like to share the simple steps I use to overcome all my bad feelings.

Take your responsibility

Blaming (lack of) luck, people stupidity/meanness/selfishness/cupidity/whatever is easy. But all the people involved usually have a responsibility, that probably means you. Taking responsibility is the first needed step to have a chance to fix/improve things. Acknowledging your lack of preparation, honesty, effort, rigor is the quickest path to recovery. I’m not talking about self bashing or whining here: Just identify an aspect that depends on you because it’s the only part you can work on.

Don’t take it personally

Taking responsibility, doesn’t mean you should make it personal. You’re not your failure! Everybody fails sometimes. Failures can be the best preparation for success. Remember your past victories, they were probably preceded by some failures.

“Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” ― Bruce Lee,

Fix/clean your mess

Taking responsibility is of no use if it’s not followed by actions. Only your action can fix things. So when you find a way to correct what must be corrected, just do it.

Just decide to stop suffering

But even if you corrected your errors, you might feel bad, trapped in negative feelings. In this case the solution is simple. Just decide to stop suffering. ““I’ve done all what I could, this feeling is counterproductive. Let’s move on…””

Another way is to smile, even if you just pretend to be happy: you just can’t feel sad and express joy at the same time.

Learn from the lesson and improve

Because all causes have the same result, if you don’t change the way you act/think what happens to you won’t change either. So when you’ve acknowledged and corrected your errors, it’s time to identify the root cause and think about how you can prevent another similar failure to ever happen in the future.

Final thoughts

Even if you called it failure, realize that if it was just a lesson, and that if you handled it properly, it made you grow and stretched your comfort zone. So be proud and enjoy, thanks to it, you’re now a better you!!