Not succeeding when attempting to do something can be unsettling, a demoralizing experience that no one wants to go through. Although it’s true that you can’t control every event that happens in your life, what you can control is how you react to them.
What not succeeding does is it tricks you into thinking that things aren’t possible. So unless you learn how to respond to not succeeding in adaptive ways, what they’ll tend to do is paralyze you, demotivate and demoralize you, while limiting the likelihood of future success.
The first thing to do is realizing its impact, how it affects your feelings, thoughts, and behavior. What’s then condensed are facts when it comes to failure, and then turning this disappointment into something that’s useful and potentially constructive.
Not Succeeding Makes Similar Goals Unattainable
What not succeeding at something does is it automatically distorts the perceptions of your goals, while making them appear more unattainable. Distorted because those original goals remain just as attainable before you failed.
It’s the perception of that goal is what changes. What you should be doing is just ignoring them, while realizing that your goals aren’t the only reason for not succeeding, which can also distort your perception.
Not Succeeding Distorts Your Abilities
Not only does failing at something make your goals appear out of reach, but it also alters your perception, making you feel as though you’re not up to performing that task.
Once you fail, you’re likely to reassess what your capabilities or skills actually are, and may do so incorrectly. You begin to think that you’re weaker than you really are. This needs to be corrected as all you’re doing is devaluing your abilities.
Failing Makes You Feel Hopeless
One common feeling most have when not succeeding is helplessness, which opens up emotional wounds. Your brain responds by making yourself give up, so you won’t feel that same helplessness feeling again.
Your mind makes you think that you can’t succeed, which results in you getting robbed of any potential future success. This is the reason why you shouldn’t always react to your gut instincts.
Not Succeeding Embeds The Fear Or Failure
Some are convinced that they have a fear of success instead of a fear of failure. The issue with “fear of failure” is that they stem from the unconscious mind, which means you’ll experience the fear regardless if it’s real or not.
What you’re not addressing is your likelihood of success, but attempting to avoid the failure. This unconscious focus is bent on avoiding failure instead of getting brave and trying new things.
Why Failure Leads To Self-Sabotage
One way that some will attempt to protect themselves from failure is by creating excuses which justifies why they’ve failed. They make up reasons why they’re not succeeding.
This type of thinking then often turns into self-fulfilling prophecies, this because they’ll then self sabotage their efforts which increases their likelihood of failure.
Passing Failure From Parent To Child
There are studies which support that those parents who have a fear of failure can unwittingly pass it down to their children, this by withdrawing emotionally, or reacting harshly once their child fails.
What they’re also conveying is that failure is unacceptable. What doing so does is it can force the child to unconsciously develop a fear of failure themselves.
Failing Increases Anxiety
Once an athlete misses an easy goal, or a golfer flubs an easy but critical putt, this is often referred to as “choking” under pressure. They fail at a seemingly easy task.
This choke label, or brain cramp occurs once the pressure to succeed or perform makes them overthink on what the brain already knows what to do, this easily and automatically.
What occurs is that you add an unnecessary correction which throws your brain off, and then the mistake is made.
How To Overcome “Choking”
It’s found that whistling or talking to yourself right before the task helps, and then focusing intently on it. What you’re doing is distracting just enough resources so your brain won’t overthink.
Choking refers to those events which are usually automatic to do, and are usually sports or performance related. What choking also does is it instills thoughts that you can “choke” again, forcing you to lose confidence.
Gaining Stronger Willpower
Willpower of the mind is similar to muscles in the body, as they both can become fatigued once they’re overused. Once willpower falters, it’s usually because it becomes tired.
What our brains need is glucose to function properly, and once it becomes depleted, it’s our cognitive functions such as concentration and attention, and our executive functions such as decision making, planning, and willpower, which begins to falter.
This is the reason why most crash diets usually ends up in binge eating, as what these diets do is deplete the dieters willpower, forcing them to lose self-control, and will as a result gorge on food.
So it becomes important to gauge how much willpower that you exert during the day, making sure that you pace yourself by resting, while being aware and vigilant once you begin feeling that it’s beginning to fade.
Your Response To Not Succeed
What not succeeding does is it can make you feel hopeless, helpless, demoralized, and anxious. But you can do something about it.
Begin by reducing the task at hand and decide what you’re in control of, and what you don’t have control over. Then look at what you can’t control, and determine if you can take control of them somehow.
Now focus again on what you can control, and then those feelings of helplessness should begin to dissipate. You’ll feel more motivated to try harder, while minimizing the chances that you may fail again.