As a fellow college goer, I too have faced certain tasks and issues for which I have found myself unprepared. These issues can vary from accepting far too many tasks during a semester than you are capable of or failing a class to simply oversleeping on a significant morning. It is no lie that times like these can really take a toll on your confidence towards your goals, especially if you might find yourself sitting alone in your room, with no appetite, a mind stressed with worry and thinking, “I feel like such a loser.”
Feeling as though you’ve failed can truly be overwhelming, so much so that I have written this list to not only help myself, but to also assist anyone who is dealing with any sort of doubt in their own abilities. As you read through this list, just keep in mind that your failure can be your success.
1.) No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes and that means you.
It’s easy to see others during the most glorious moments of their lives. And why wouldn’t it? I’m sure your coworker would prefer to tell you all about how incredible her date was last night than describe the awful ending to her last relationship. Although you will come in contact with a few of those who seems to walk with a rain cloud above their head, nevertheless, the first step to making your failed actions into success is understanding that, underneath the surface, we all have our flaws.
2.) You are worth more than your mistakes.
A fallen glass cup is just a shattered mess. A failed research paper is simply an attempt with little effort. A dead fish is a lack of attention. You are not a mess, something made before class or something swirling around in the toilet. You are a unique individual that may and will experience trial and error. In other words, stop defining yourself based on your mistakes. They don’t make up who you are.
3.) Failure can make you more understanding.
Have you ever spoken to someone regarding an issue and, instead of comforting or offering any sort of advice, their response went along the lines of, “You’ve just failed your final? That sucks. I never failed anything before.” Helpful, right?
Allowing yourself to understand why you may have failed, accepting it and bettering yourself soon after will award you the opportunity of learning one of life’s greatest skills: knowing how to put yourself in another’s shoes.
What does this entirely mean? That the moment someone comes to you with any sort of issue that brought them grief, you’ll have a better understanding of how to advise them.
4.) You can set an example and motivate others.
Be that person who didn’t always succeed, cried over failed attempts and knew what it was like to be rejected. Be that person who didn’t care how far off you were from success, how many times you’ve been told to give up or how many times you’ve failed. Instead, be someone who somehow still picked yourself right back up and succeeded as if failure was never in your history. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be an all around successful person 100 percent of the time, if that’s at all possible, but there’s a certain beauty in a person that made something out of nothing.
5.) Remember that the media is more of an influence than you think.
Remember how happy your mother was to lose five pounds from her morning power walks to only feel blue again after buying groceries near that rack of model-filled magazine covers? It is no lie that the media is a powerful weapon. This is easily due to the fact that it is simply everywhere. Television, covers of magazines at check-out, social media, you name it, it’s probably within three feet of you or in your pocket.
Though it’s nearly impossible to escape the influences of all that is mainstream and spread by the media, understanding that those behind it do not hold the power to judge what should or shouldn’t be considered successful. Make your own success story. In short, before you allow yourself to feel down due to something you may have read or seen on your merry way to the ice cream shop, ask yourself if this source of information is really worth your time and effort to absorb. Will this upsetting information benefit you at all?
6.) It is what it is.
Life happened and you weren’t quick enough to act. As humans, we will probably always be capable of stopping something before it happens, but, since we’re humans, we’re probably going to have our moments where failures knock on our door and we’ll let them in with cookies and milk waiting on the table. Sometimes, the failure will be disguised as our grandmother, fooling us to believing we can trust it. Morals of these analogies: sometimes you get some bad luck, were in a wrong place at the wrong time or just committed a human mistake. All there is to do is suck it up, learn from it and move on.
7.) This is what life is about.
If your life is filled with constant success, people telling you how amazing you are, and living without a struggle in the world, chances are your life sucks. This is because life itself is based off of not only the good times, but the bad ones. And it’s the bad ones that fully test your sense of mental, emotional. And sometimes physical strength. It is those moments of hardships that enlightens you with the knowledge you hold today. It is those same moments in your life that allow you to know happiness and appreciation.
8.) Your failures may encourage personal relationships and friendships.
Once you forgive yourself for failing, you’ll began to sympathize with those around you to a greater degree. Being capable of sympathizing with another allows this person to heal faster during their time of need and hardship. Not only can this create a good deed, but one day that good deed may be returned.
Although a tough moment in life can bring out many opportunities for one to learn, feel motivated and become a stronger person, this does not mean failure should always be encouraged. Mistakes and rejected actions can and only will take on positive effects if you allow it to take that positive path. Failure is never a wrongdoing if you put the effort into building it into the castle it can become. If you wait around doing everything the same as you did that may have caused this dreaded experience, don’t expect success. Nevertheless, it is never too late to turn your faults into stars of your own.
