Tips For Overcoming Failure (Part Two)

There’s a certain nobility to failure. If you’ve failed, it means you’ve had the courage to try. To quote Robert F. Kennedy, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”. Here are 3 tips for dealing with feelings of failure so that you can suit up and walk back out onto the arena to try again.

1. Treat whatever it is that you’re trying to succeed at as an ongoing experiment and apply the scientific method described below. Following this approach is what allowed Thomas Edison to express: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." When there’s something that you truly desire to accomplish, you should be willing to make trial after trial until you’ve achieved it.

The Scientific Method refers to the technique used to test a hypothesis—a tentative statement about how something works—by conducting experiments, collecting and analyzing data, and drawing a conclusion. If your experiment reveals that your hypothesis was wrong, then you reject that hypothesis. You then go on to construct a new hypothesis based on the data or feedback you collected, and you proceed to test your new hypothesis. Continue applying the same process until you find a hypothesis that is correct. Here are some things to keep in mind when applying the Scientific Method:

• Your hypothesis is basically a prediction or an educated guess: “If this is done, then this will happen . . . ”

• Read and skim through a wide variety of magazines, newspapers, websites, and books for ideas. You can also attend lectures and seminars.

• Plan your experiments.

• Keep a log book of your experiments.

• Approach your experiments with curiosity.

• Be flexible.

• Use your intuition.

• Control your variables: vary one thing at a time and keep careful notes.

• If one hypothesis fails you generate another and another until you succeed.

By applying this approach to your endeavors you haven’t failed when something doesn’t work. Instead, you’re acquiring knowledge; you’re collecting, analyzing, and recording data; and you’re systematically moving toward discovering what does work.

2. Use humor and laughter to alleviate the negative emotions that often accompany failure. Laughter is now being studied for its medicinal qualities and its ability to reduce stress. It has been found to lower blood pressure and raise endorphin activity in the body. Mark Twain propounded the importance of laughter when he wrote: "The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that's laughter. The moment it arises, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."

There’s even a new healing therapy called Laughter Yoga. Laughter Yoga combines yogic breathing exercises with laughter exercises. In the workshop, participants start by softly sounding "ha, ha, ha" from the belly. It's fake chuckling, but it soon builds into loud laughter. If this doesn’t sound like something you’d be interested in trying, you can always add books by Ashley Brilliant to your library.

3. Take care of yourself. It’s easier to deal with feelings of defeat in one area of your life if other areas of your life are going well. Continue to pay attention to those areas of your life that are working for you. If all of your eggs were in one basket and you’d been neglecting other areas of your life, now is the time to regain some balance. The worse thing you can do is to deal with feelings of failure by adopting self-destructive behaviors such as overeating, neglecting to exercise, watching endless hours of television, and so on. The world needs people who are willing to take up challenges. Don’t lose your enthusiasm.