Failure, Mental health and Happiness

How many times have you failed? What's your greatest failure? You probably have never thought about these things, right? Failure is one of the most uncomfortable topics to talk or think about. It directly affects our mental and physical well-being yet no one likes to talk about it. Give yourself some time and think about your failures for a while, and please don't be hard on yourself by saying, "I have never actually failed in my life," because we all know every one of us has failed at something at some point. Failures can be as simple as not being able to complete your plan of waking up early the next morning to study for your test or maybe not being able to keep up with your plan of joining the gym. Some of us might have failed a test that we studied so hard for whereas, some of us might have failed to keep our relationships alive with our significant other, our friends and our families. It's okay to fail not only once but several times and also in several aspects of life. Even when we know failure is common, why is it so hard for us to talk about it? Also what makes us think that we as humans need to be perfect? In my opinion, failure is something that needs to be discussed more often and more openly.

We are afraid of failures because we worry too much about how others are going to view us. And of course, when we worry too much about something that is not within our control, it affects our mental and emotional well- being. If we stop seeing ourselves from other's eyes, maybe we could learn to cope with our failures a little more easily. However, the biggest challenge is how do we stop comparing ourselves with others when we can see our friends or people of our age living a lavish life, owning their dream cars constantly on social media. Besides, we crave success so much that we tend to forget the journey and constant failings that come along with it. Have you ever wondered why mental illness is at peak these days? It is at peak because everything is treated as a competition these days such as who gets more likes on instagram, who is getting more views on youtube, who is trending on fashion and music, who makes more money and furthermore things like getting married, parenthood and so on. Well, competitions are not always bad because competition is what makes us want to do better right? But what if that competition is taking away your happiness? When everything around us seems like a competition, we spend so much time thinking about the results and consequences rather than the journey itself, and the constant feeling of "What if I fail?" makes it difficult to be happy.

Nowadays we meet so many people who claim to be an advocate for mental health and happiness, but be careful who you seek help with. Everyone is different and thus everyone has different perspectives of failures, pain and how they cope with those things. Just because you have been through some pain in the past, doesn't mean you now have a license to understand what the other person is actually going through. The main issue of our generation is we tend to assume things. Instead of just having a regular conversation with the person we somehow find it easy to assume their circumstances and decide if their sadness is validated or not. This reminds me of a term called "Positive Toxicity." Positive toxicity is denying the existence of negative human emotions such as anger, sadness, failures and expecting ourselves and others to pretend to be positive and happy all day or all the time. Comparing your problems to others to show them that their problem is not as big as they think is also one of the positive toxic behaviors. "Too much sugar tastes bitter", so be careful and keep yourselves away from too much positivity because sadness, anger, jealousy and failures are all normal. If you cannot do anything to make people going through a hard time feel better, the least and most important thing you could offer is "TO LISTEN.”

I am currently listening to a podcast called "The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos'' where she talks about how our own mind lies to us about what makes us happy. She is a psychologist and lecturer at Yale University who interviews and dissects the things that go into our mind which will help you explore the real meaning of happiness. Of course there are tons of resources available on the internet about mental health but be careful to check the credentials before you actually start believing them.