The process of working toward goals can involve failures and setbacks, but you can use these events to your advantage. Creating a personal strategy to respond to failure can help you overcome challenges and achieve your goals more efficiently. Understanding how to implement coping strategies can help you at any stage of your professional development, from the initial hiring process to the later stages of your career.
In this article, we discuss the steps you can take to overcome failure and create a positive outcome.
When you experience failure in your professional life, you might experience some feelings that can make it challenging to think about your experience objectively. Having a predefined strategy can help you put the event in context, remember your personal value and manage any future challenges that you encounter without fear. As you develop resiliency to failure, it may be easier for you to try alternative techniques and learn new lessons, which can broaden your skills and help you achieve greater professional satisfaction.
How to overcome failure for a positive outcome
It’s important to develop skills for overcoming challenges and setbacks so that you can continue to find satisfaction and make progress in your professional life. Here are some steps you can implement to help you work through failure:
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1. Accept your feelings.
The first step in overcoming failure is to acknowledge how you feel. You may feel sad, disappointed, angry or hurt after a professional failure. Recognizing these feelings and connecting them to the failure itself can help you realize that you don’t have to experience these negative thoughts indefinitely. Allowing yourself to feel this way for a short amount of time can help you release these feelings and proceed with everything you want to accomplish.
2. Take a break.
To be able to look at the event more objectively, you can give yourself a mental break by doing a different activity. If you’re in the office, this might mean taking a short five-minute and going outside or using your lunch break for an activity you enjoy. If your work schedule is busy, you might work on a different task for a few hours or days. This way, you can be calm and reasonable when you return to your challenge. Concentrating on something else can help you avoid overthinking the situation.
3. Put the event into perspective.
It’s important to remember that failure doesn’t represent you as a person. Think about the event’s real consequences to understand the degree of its impact, and consider all the aspects of your life that your setback doesn’t influence. You might also make a list of your professional accomplishments or personal strengths to remember your unique value and advantages. If you’re struggling to think objectively, imagine what you’d say or do if a friend had been in this situation, and then apply that kindness and advice to yourself.
4. Find things to learn.
Work to understand why the problem happened and what caused the negative result. This can help you achieve more positive outcomes in the future. You might ask yourself questions like “What was the series of choices I made that allowed this event to happen?” or “Which choice might I make differently next time to change the outcome?” If you find it challenging to compose clear answers, consider asking a leader or supervisor for their perspective and advice.
5. Take responsibility and accountability.
After you’ve thought about what exactly happened, take responsibility for your role in the event. This might mean describing your role to a coworker who is responsible for resolving it, apologizing for your mistakes or reporting any events necessary through company policy. Then, take accountability for your actions by understanding whether you’ve caused harm to others and working to address your mistakes.
6. Discuss the event.
Talking about the event with someone you trust can be encouraging. They may suggest new opportunities or new perspectives on the failure that make it easier to use constructively. If you’re able to talk to a professional in your field outside of your workplace, like a mentor or professor, they may be able to give you advice about how to move forward in your specific field.
7. Learn about solutions and behavior models.
Research can be a powerful tool since you can use it to learn from the experiences of others. If you’re facing a professional setback, you may choose to learn about leaders in your field by reading interviews or memoirs. Understanding how others failed and recovered can show you how you can recuperate and return to any task you need to complete with improved capabilities. You may also be able to normalize setbacks in your career, which can minimize the time it takes you to recover in the future.
8. Create a plan.
Using what you learned from the previous steps, you can establish a plan for moving forward with your goals. Your plan may include implementing new techniques that you learned from a conversation with a mentor, applying for a new job opportunity or taking a course to strengthen specific skills. As you document your plan, try to include measurable elements and steps for accountability so that you can better assess your progress. Create a schedule and establish deadlines for specific goals, and aim to meet with a mentor or friend to discuss your progress. If you find this article useful, please kindly spread with love.
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