The posts from @Matthew Richter never fails to inspire me to reflect and reach.
Here are some techniques I use before getting unhinged by failure and feeling that the sky is falling down:
- Don’t let other people define my “failure”. Use my own judgement and criteria. Redefine my failure as a stepping-stone to learning.
- Feel the pain of failure, but don’t ruminate on it. Also, avoid unhealthy passive escape routes like being absorbed in reading murder mysteries.
- Don’t make it personal. Don’t damage my self-esteem. Don’t play the victim role. Take the appropriate responsibility for my share in what happened.
- Take a time out. Sleep over my failure. Do something else to give myself space.
- Debrief myself. Ask myself how I feel. Put specific emotional labels to my reactions to “failure”. Accept my feelings.
- Remember, “failure” is a trigger for resilient learning and adaptation.
- Analyze the cause of the “failure”. Avoid the personalizing the fundamental error: Stop attributing the cause to my character defects. Conduct a performance analysis: Make a list of situational and environmental causes.
- Work backward from the “failure” to causes and to new skills and knowledge. Use “failure” as a trigger for learning. Determine how I would act differently the next time in the same situation.
- To prevent future “failure”, change my behaviors. Or change the goal I was trying to achieve. Specify a more realistic goal.
- Plan my next step. Come up with action items for recouping from the “failure”. Take one of these action items and implement it immediately.
