You have found a dream job and are doing everything to achieve the desired position.
You submit a resume, and in a few days you will be happy to know that you were invited for an interview. Everything is going well, and you begin to experience a sweet anticipation that you will be invited to the workplace.
Not always everything turns out the way we expect
Instead, you receive a letter of thanks, and the position is given to another candidate.
At this point, you can let yourself feel defeated, upset, and perhaps even a little angry. This is a normal reaction to bad news. Nevertheless, do not allow failures to violate your goals. Successful people do not allow them to destroy their dreams.
Of course, even strong people can temporarily feel devastated. But very quickly they get back on their feet and begin to plan their next steps to success.
What about you? Are you currently embarrassed or guilty of failure?
Do not worry if you experience such feelings - this is normal, since most of us have been programmed to fail as something bad since childhood. According to a good psychologist friend of mine, failure is actually an integral part of success. If you make mistakes, then you are on the right track.
Do not be tempted by perfection
Resistance to failure is inherently a commitment to excellence. But the fact is, the ideal does not exist. This is why perfectionists can be chronic procrastinators.
As my psychologist friend notes, people who constantly strive for excellence do not allow themselves to participate in difficult trials. This is because perfectionists are less creative and prone to innovations than the average person, and they are also less likely to take risks. Such people are overly focused on their own work. Unfortunately, certain boundaries do not allow them to focus on the study of new problems.
However, the desire to achieve something more and the desire for excellence are completely different things.
In the first case, the person really makes every effort to achieve the goal, and in the second case, this is just a stupid pursuit of the unattainable.
And there is another problem that perfectionists face, namely: when they cannot achieve their ideal, they feel depressed and defeated. As you can imagine, these people may end up experiencing bitterness and depression about their entire lives because they could not achieve the ideal that they dreamed of.
So, forget about the search for excellence, and instead focus on always doing everything you can.
Why do failures make us better?
Recently, my psychologist told me about an article in Forbes magazine, "Failure on the Road to Success: Why Failure is a Key to Success." This helped to understand why most people are negative about failure.
The article refers to the work of two world-famous psychologists (Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky), who were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work. They found something very interesting: the effect of losing twice as much as the gain. Sounds pretty weird, isn't it? Have you ever thought about this before?
This means that failure has a much greater negative effect on us than victory creates a positive attitude. Unsurprisingly, most people are afraid to fail. But however, there is an interesting nuance.
Amazon (which ranks with Apple, Facebook and Google and is considered one of the Big Four technology companies) has a culture of tolerance for failure.And Jeff Bezos - the founder and CEO of Amazon - believes that this culture is one of the main reasons for the great achievements of the company over the past 25 years. In a letter to shareholders, he said that failure is an integral part of any invention. Not always everything works right the first time. Employees understand this and accept failure early on until they do everything right and well.
In truth, a slip can open up a world of exciting opportunities for you.
How does it work?
Don't see failure as something bad. Any mistakes help us to learn and next time to do more wisely. Missing is an incentive to get better.
Thus, instead of perceiving failure as something detrimental to success, you should consider it as a tool for achieving happiness. A tool that will help you constantly improve your life path.
If you still need to convince yourself that the secret to success is failure, take a look at the following persons in our article. You will not believe that once these people were very unlucky.
Famous people who used to be losers
Soon after graduating from college, Joan Rowling faced a sea of problems, including unemployment, marriage breakdown, and living as a single mother. However, instead of losing her life, she used these failures, which made her write a fantastic Harry Potter novel, the series of best-selling books in history. Now Joan is considered one of the most popular writers in the world, and her Harry Potter is the favorite hero of many children.
Walt Disney also had a hard start. He left school at a young age, enrolling in the army. Later, one of his early commercial ventures, Laugh-o-Gram Studios, went bankrupt. He was also fired from the Missouri newspaper for the reason that he had a lack of creative ideas. (Yes, you read that right). Was he defeated by these failures? Just ask Mickey Mouse and the other characters. Today the Disney studio is one of the largest centers in the field of entertainment and animation.
Michael Jordan, a famous basketball player, spoke about his power of failure: he conceded more than 9,000 goals in his career. And lost almost 300 games. 26 times they trusted him to make a winning throw and he missed. Jordan failed again and again until he was successful.
Accept failure and prepare for success
Failure has long been considered something negative, but in fact it is a healthy, integral part of our success.
The trick is to develop a winner’s mindset. He who considers failure to be a stepping stone to success ultimately wins.