Mental Toughness & Iron Will: Facing Failure and Fear

This is a continuation of the prior article posted earlier, you can check it out by going through my published articles or see the first comment. In this article, we will be talking about the second chapter of Mental Toughness and Iron Will : Facing Failure and Fear. It's going to be a long read ahead, folks.

Casey was feeling down on her luck. She’d been applying for jobs but had only gotten a few interviews. At first, she took it in stride. Lots of people face challenges when they’re job-hunting, she told herself. Not everyone gets a job right away, and it’s unreasonable to expect instant success in any walk of life.

As the days stretched into weeks, she started thinking that maybe she was the problem. This is my fault, she thought. Unconsciously, she started keeping a list of all the reasons she was undesirable as an employee. When she would apply for new jobs or write cover letters, her heart wasn’t in it as she never quite thought she would have a chance. She was taking herself out of the game without realizing it.

One day Casey found herself grousing internally about her bad luck, and all of a sudden, as if she’d heard a voice actually say it, she thought, ENOUGH. She realized that her attitude was affecting her job search. If she faltered now, when she was up against a few minor setbacks, then what would happen when she got a job and faced real challenges?

She remembered a class she took in college about Buddhist beliefs and how Buddhists are trained to believe in impermanence of both happiness and sadness. If everything was fleeting, then what’s bad shall pass soon enough, she reasoned to herself. If life was a series of ebbs and flows, then her luck would eventually change. All she had to do was do her best to believe in herself and know that both happiness and sadness were impermanent states — she just happened to be in a negative state that would pass shortly.

So she reconsidered the way she’d been approaching her hunt for a job. She rewrote her resume and began reading employment blogs to pick up interviewing tips. She decided to look at rejection as a way to learn and adapt for those inevitable happy periods, which would also be impermanent. Soon enough, calls for interviews turned into job offers.

Many people will find themselves in situations like Casey’s at some point in their lives. They encounter a setback or an obstacle in their process and then they don’t know what to do next. Indeed, we are never taught a roadmap to deal with rejection and failure or even the prospect of those crippling psychological forces. Casey was lucky that she was able to grasp on to some age-old wisdom from Buddhism, which is something we’ll cover shortly in this chapter.

But what other ways can we equip ourselves to deal with failure and fear? This might be one of the cornerstone questions of what makes one person mentally tough and another not—the ability to deal with life as it comes, for better or worse.

No one will ever talk about needing mental toughness when everything is smooth sailing, so what happens when you hit an iceberg and have to scramble? It’s a waste of time to plan to avoid those icebergs—if you avoid the first layer of icebergs, you’ll just get nailed at the second or third layer. Therefore, we should prepare for what happens in those inevitable moments of pain. Those are the moments that define your character, and that’s what this chapter is about.

There are a few different ways people can cope with tough periods in their lives. One way, for example, is by taking a Buddhist approach. It’s worth consideration even if you’re not a practicing Buddhist.

Buddhist Philosophies

It helps to know a little about the beginning of Buddhism and where it came from. The Buddha is not a deity in the traditional sense, and he is not to be worshipped as other religions worship a central figure. Buddha began life as a prince known as Siddhartha Gautama. He traveled widely in his princely duties and began to wonder if there was a way to alleviate or even to avoid the suffering he saw so common in his lands. He was deeply troubled by the fact that, no matter how powerful you were, nobody could escape the pains caused by illness, aging, and death.

Buddhism makes the assumption that suffering is a result of our desires and expectations, rather than our realities. In other words, what doesn’t exist, and may never exist, is what is actually making us suffer. It’s quite illuminating to realize that you may have rooted your hopes and dreams in the future or past, with little regard to the present moment and how you feel right now. Indeed, you are solely responsible for how fulfilled and happy you feel.

• Accept this moment as it is. Thus, one of Buddhism’s greatest tenets is to accept the status quo for what it is, whatever it is. A person who has hit a rough patch must accept it and not try to rush past it or ignore it. You don’t have to like it, but you must understand that it’s where you are now. You can’t fast-forward or rewind your life. Trying to resist the moment will only compound your suffering. The important thing to remember is that this moment won’t last. Everything is temporary, for better or worse.
• Accept that life can never be perfect. Nothing in life is perfect. This is the second lesson you can learn from Buddhist thought. The faster you release expectations of perfection, the faster you can end your struggling. It’s an unrealistic expectation, and one that makes you hate anything that falls short of it. You’re setting yourself up for failure when you have the slightest inclination toward perfection. When would you ever be able to find contentment? We have to let go of our ideas about how life must turn out before we can finally be happy.
• Suffering shows you a path. Who wants to embrace struggling or suffering? However, this line of thought isn’t all about suffering. According to Buddhist thought, suffering is inevitable, roughly 50% of life by the law of averages. So what do we do? Turn away and run from 50% of the events in our lives? While hard times are unavoidable, according to Buddhism you should face those moments. If this seems challenging, remember that you do it for others. When you see someone in distress, you acknowledge that they’re hurting and then you try to comfort them. This rolls directly into the next Buddhist tenet.
• Be kind to yourself and others. What does this mean, exactly? When a friend is being self- critical, you don’t join in. You assure them their fears are unfounded and you might even argue with them not to talk that way about your friend. Show yourself the same compassion. In fact, you wouldn’t dare talk to a friend the way you talk to yourself. Being kind to yourself means accepting flaws and moving through life while giving yourself the benefit of the doubt. Self-love can help you confront the painful aspects of your life, which will then help you recognize the pain of others. It’s important then to remember that this is not weakness. Instead, what builds our courage and our resilience in the face of struggle.

Learning from Failure

As has been made clear, failure and fear are not things you can plan to avoid. You can plan around them, but not plan to avoid them. The ship you’re steering will inevitably hit an iceberg, but that iceberg doesn’t necessarily have to sink you. What you do after you’re hit will determine that; how you choose to respond is at the crux of handling setbacks. You can harness your setback into a learning experience, though admittedly it will never be our first instinct.

There are several common ways that people react when they’re faced with resistance. Usually, these ways are rooted in emotion — they are emotional responses. We know that, by definition, emotional responses don’t often overlap with a reasoned and rational response. They are intense and reactive to the point of being detrimental, but it cannot be helped, for such is human nature.

For instance, one common emotional response to resistance is to blame himself or herself. It’s okay to be critical, even self-critical, as this is the engine of growth and development. But you can also take it too far. When you blame your issues on yourself in a way that assumes that any problems you have are based on a permanent flaw, then you don’t allow yourself room for growth. You also don’t give yourself the ability to rebound. All you do is put yourself in a situation where you can never win and were destined to be the villain. Blaming yourself might be a stage you must pass through, so all you can hope to do most of the time is to keep this stage quick.

You can’t overcome failure without acting. Yes, you tried something and you failed. Unless you’ve been unusually lucky, it wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last time that you fail at something. However, you tried and you can try again. Failure is not the end.

One of the most effective ways to learn from failure is to question the failure. While it’s true that some obstacles in your life may seem insurmountable, they only seem this way if you’re not trying all you can think of to scale them. You can do this by asking the right questions. These include questions concerning what you can learn from the experience and typically end in concrete solutions and answers about how to act differently.

1. How can I do this better? Are your methods fatally flawed and crumble under greater scrutiny? Are you missing a crucial element that would make things easier and more efficient?
2. What can I learn from this experience? What did you learn that works? Do you understand what made the difference? Where was the flaw and what else needs to be fixed?
3. How can I make the most of my predicament? What did you learn not to do, and how will you do it differently next time? What’s the next best step to do in light of the predicament, and what ways can it be salvaged?
4. What can I do here that I hadn’t considered before? What did you miss and need to spend time exploring? What assumptions were wrong and need to be re-evaluated?

Amor Fati

“My formula for what is great in mankind is amor fati: not to wish for anything other than that which is; whether behind, ahead, or for all eternity. Not just to put up with the inevitable — much less to hide it from oneself, for all idealism is lying to oneself in the face of the necessary — but to love it.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

Amor fati, which means literally the love of fate, simply means to accept and love everything that happens. In other words, Nietzsche offers the key to a happy life: do not wish for reality to be any different; rather, accept and love whatever happens. The parallels to Buddhism should be clear.

We have the option of going along and enjoying the ride, or we have the option of fighting and complaining all the way. Since nobody wants to be dragged along, the best thing we can do is make the most of the journey and plan for the journey itself rather than fuss about how bad it might be.

Complaining will not help, and pulling away will not help, but moving forward and facing what comes allows us to experience all sorts of terrain: joy, love, excitement, boredom, sadness, and, yes, even fear. The key is to keep going forward, along for the ride, no matter what we face.

The idea is simple: take every moment as it is; take reality as it is; do not resist or it will have power over you; if you take it as it comes, it will have no power over you. It is a simple idea but difficult to put into practice. One way to put this philosophy into action is by recognizing that things come and go.

By embracing amor fati, you would accept the loss and move on to whatever fate brings. Perhaps it becomes a chance to explore a new job focus; perhaps it is a catalyst for starting that small business that, up until now, was only a daydream; perhaps it is the motivation to return for additional training or education.

Can you plan your life to avoid fear and failure? Yes, but that would lead to a life of emptiness. To achieve any measure of happiness and success in life, elements of fear and failure will always be present. Not everything will always go your way. So instead of planning to avoid failure, plan for what happens when you inevitably sail into an iceberg. You may be able to steer clear of the first one, but the second or third will get you eventually.

Buddhist philosophy is a helpful lens to look at failure through. What is failure to Buddhists? Unpleasant, but impermanent and necessary. Life goes through ebbs and flows, and the only constant is change. Accepting this will help negative moments pass more easily, as will accepting that perfection is impossible. Moreover, our suffering shows us a path to greater fulfillment and happiness. Buddhism is about understanding that your life is like a wave that gives and takes equally.

Fear and failure are your ultimate teachers. When you fail, typical responses include blaming yourself or denial. These are instinctual because failure is an emotional event, and our lizard brains rush to protect ourselves. But failure is best when you can look at it and give it equal time as your successes. This allows you to understand and deconstruct how to never fail in that context again. Your very worst- case scenario is not failing; it is being able to learn from it.

Amor fati literally means to love fate. Does that mean you should love whatever obstacles or failures you come across? Of course, not. But you can love the infinite possibilities and futures you now have access to. Acceptance, similarly to Buddhism, is important, because to struggle with or deny failure is to cause oneself unnecessary pain.

By Patrick King's "Mental Toughness & Iron Will: Become Tenacious, Resilient, Psychologically Strong, and Tough as Nails"