Life happens. Bad days happen. Mistakes, even horribly awful mistakes, happen. What do you do when you experience the overwhelming emotions of feeling like a failure?
These are my top 5 most helpful tips
when feeling like a failure.
Failure is one of the most dreadful emotions one can experience. Everything you thought would happen didn't, and you're left disappointed and discouraged. Whether it's our fault or not, the hopelessness we experience in these moments can cause anxiety to skyrocket into a gigantic disaster of feelings.
You can't necessarily stop those feelings, so what do you do with them?!
These are my top most-beneficial tips when experiencing feelings of failure!
Feeling like a Failure
Tip #1 for Feeling like a failure
Reconnect with God
Because feelings of failure are the type of emotions that can throw you over a mental cliff, I highly recommend that your first step be reconnecting with God. Nothing reassures you of your value on this earth, like reconnecting with the one who created you.
Some of the ways to do this are:
- Reading scripture about identity.(Start Here)
- Turing worship music on, sitting alone with God, and letting all of your emotions out. (The best thing about this is that God already knows them on a deeper level than you do, and you can feel seen and understood!)(Instrumental Album)
- If you really did fail, ask for forgiveness. This will guarantee a fresh start. It's always needed, but especially after perceived failure!
- Journal your prayers and feelings. If you're like me, you may need to get those feelings out on paper, and then you can remember those moments later when you look back; it's a beautiful reflecting tool!(a nice journal to buy here)
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Tip #2 for Feeling like a failure
Recommit to your journey
One of the things failure can do is stop all progress. So many people let failure or unmet expectations become a directional life-change instead of an inevitable obstacle that they must overcome.
Winston Churchill once said, "success is not final, failure is not fatal, it's the courage to continue that counts."
If we are ever going to do anything extraordinary, we must not let failure and the anxiety that comes with it derail us.
Recommit to your journey, whatever you are pursuing, get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Perseverance will give you a win in one way or another, every time!
You got this!
Tip #3 for Feeling like a failure
reevaluate your strategy
If you're going to continue pursuing your goals and dreams, you must always use moments of failure to reevaluate how you are doing things.
Thomas Edison once said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Reevaluating the things that don't work and implementing new things that might work better is the best possible guarantee that you'll continue your journey toward your goals. Keeping your journey fresh and new in every season will make it exciting and not mundane.
Continually reevaluate what you could do better because doing the same things will result in the same ending.
Tip #4 for Feeling like a failure
Respect the Process
Kobe Bryant once said, "Great things come from hard work and perseverance, no excuses. If you love a thing you will overcome all difficulties."
Feeling like a failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but how you handle it will make all the difference.
Everything we ever accomplish in life that's worth anything takes hard work and perseverance.
Often, our success is determined by our ability to get back up after a failure.
In a recent interview with The Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, Jamie Kern Lima, co-founder of IT Cosmetics and the first female CEO of a L'Oréal brand, said that she was rejected hundreds of times before her brand ever took off. Though she experienced failure after failure, she continued and eventually sold her company for 1.8 Billion dollars! What an inspirational story of hard work and perseverance!
No goal worth achieving can be achieved overnight. Persevering past failure is the only way to guarantee that we live a life free from regret!
Tip #5 for Feeling like a failure
Reassure Yourself with healthy self-talk
After taking steps 1-4, reassuring yourself with healthy self-talk is vital to overcome those lingering feelings of failure.
The momentary experience of feeling like a failure can turn into days, weeks, and even months of negative self-talk. That, can lead us to a place of intense and overwhelming low self-esteem and anxiety.
Brené Brown is quoted saying, "Talk to yourself like you would someone you love."
Most of us have a terrible habit of talking down to ourselves in moments of failure. We talk to ourselves in ways that we would never talk to ANYONE, not even our worst enemy!
I've found in my life, if I reframe my words to match my goals, I like myself a lot more. Being your own best cheerleader is crucial because you can never expect anyone else to believe in you if you don't believe in yourself!
Self-assurance will silence failure and its weighty words in your life. Be sure you are kind to yourself, especially in moments of failure, when you need it most!
MORE RELATED ARTICLES FROM GOODBYE ANXIOUS!
Feeling like a failure is just that, a feeling.
It doesn't have to be final. I love the idea behind those tattoos that people are getting that are a semicolon, representing when an author writing a story chooses not to end a sentence but to continue it. It's a powerful declaration of continuing a challenging journey, getting back up again after failure, or not giving up despite mental health issues. Even if you're not into tattoos remember, your failures are nothing but a semicolon in the grand picture of your life!
Failure will become the place of your most extraordinary pivot if you reframe your thinking around it!
You can and will become all you desire, and all God has called you to be!
Failure isn't the end, friends, you got this!
These have been my top tips to help when feeling like a failure!
Let me know in the comments below how these helped you!
