I have two good tips on how to deal with failure: 1. Fail more. 2. Meditate. These techniques work best in combination with each other.
Practice failing
How can we become good at dealing with failure? By exercising, of course! It is the same principle that applies everywhere; the more we practice the better we get. It is silly to think that a way of life based on trying to avoid mistakes could somehow make us good at dealing with them.
Life is full of failures. It almost never goes as planned. I guess you could say we fail almost all the time. Although it's only just after 12 in the day, I've already had a number of failures. I had planned to get up early and do my language homework, but I failed and gave in to my laziness. I had a meeting with a person this morning and failed to understand her. I also failed to get praise from my colleague for a job that I had done. Imagine that! So many failures! Maybe it's just as well that I bury myself somewhere!
What we need to realize is that life will never suit us. It will never turn out the way we planned. We have a tendency to live in a fantasy world where we expect and demand that life be the way we want it to be. Although we can logically understand that this is a fantasy, we subconsciously believe it. We attribute value and meaning to imagination. Now is the time to put down the silly charade. Life will never be as we imagined. Never. Full stop.
Against this background, it is much better to accept failure as a part of life. Change attitude towards failures. It's not bad to fail. Instead of avoiding failure, practice failing as much as you can. Over time, failure won't be a big deal. In a natural way, you will become really good at handling them.
Meditate
As a supplement to the aforementioned failure training, I highly recommend meditating.
There are mainly two reasons why we suffer from failure. One is that we are ashamed that we have done "wrong". Our pride has been hurt and it hurts. The second reason is that we take the failure to revenue because a valuable opportunity has passed us by. That we feel this way is due to our inferiority complex (the feeling of not being good enough) and our greed (the belief that we need something more to be good).
Through meditation, we can see how our mind works and empty out the mechanisms that create the pain. We can thus get rid of both pride, inferiority complex and greed. The more we get rid of these thoughts and feelings, the less we will care about whether things go our way or not.
These days, I see failure (even success, actually) as feedback only. Failure shows me something about myself, about my mind. I can see what it is that I carry inside and release it using the meditation method. If the failure shows me anger or irritation, I let it go. If failure brings up hurt feelings, I let them go. And if I experience jealousy, I throw it away.
The purpose of failure
Meditation has given me a greater perspective. I realize that everything is grateful because every "failure" is an opportunity for me to free my mind by emptying it. A free mind is a naturally happy mind. A free mind is also our true and original mind. We should strive to free our mind and find our true self. I believe that is the real purpose of failure, as well as of life itself.
Michael
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