Failure is difficult to deal with no matter how small the setback may be. But when you experience failure, you have two options: you can choose the easy way out of giving up or you can make the choice to pick yourself up and start all over again.
By choosing the latter, you are bound to reach levels of success that you may have never seen if you chose defeat.
Here are 5 steps you can follow to make it easier to bounce back after a setback:
1. ACCEPT THE FAILURE
Failure is bound to happen and it is especially more rampant when you are working towards hefty goals. When it does happen, you must take a second to pause, acknowledge, and accept the failure. This is the first step to learning from your failures and coming back to the game stronger than before.
2. LEAN ON YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM
Your support system might be your friends, your colleagues, your peers, or your accountability system. Whoever these people may be for you, they’re there to help you in good times and bad times. Don’t be afraid to lean on them when you’re going through a setback.
3. LEARN YOUR LESSON
For a failure to be valuable to you and your journey, you need to take the time to reflect and learn what the lesson was from this failure. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself…
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What can I learn from this?
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What could I have done differently?
What’s important here is that you take responsibility for what you may have done incorrectly and learn from these mistakes.
4. TAKE TIME TO PLAN YOUR NEXT MOVE
With the new wisdom you’ve acquired from the mistakes you made, you should be able to anticipate where you could have run into this same issue at some other point in your journey. Take the time to look at your plan to make sure there are no opportunities for you to repeat the same mistake and to plan your next moves.
5. GET OVER IT
Once you’ve learned your lesson, it’s time to get over it. You can’t sit and dwell in the shame or anger that may come from failing. Take the lesson, get over it, and move up.
Remember that failure is not the opposite of success, it is part of success. Thus, the importance of learning how to take the most out of your setbacks and let go of the parts that would simply hold you down.