The Bitterness and Pain of Failure

Failure teaches us to be human beings who can accept the reality that happens in our lives. Because life is not always the way we want it to be, therefore failure exists as part of human existence. What makes failure a painful and bitter process is our response to the event.

Failure is often seen as a scary and sad thing. It becomes scary to feel how difficult it is to achieve what we want. Meanwhile, failure is also a sad thing because when it happens, we feel ourselves as useless people.

Slowly we also feel success as something that is difficult to reach and causes us to tend to give up easily. Failure also makes us feel so weak, helpless, and do not want to do anything. Plus, being in a state of being so depressed and on the verge of confusion makes it difficult for us to think clearly to respond to failure appropriately.

Failure is felt to be as bad as it affects humans, leaving scars and pain that leave such an imprint on us. Failure also seems to be a taboo thing to talk about. Often we do not dare to complain or say sadly that we failed. In the end we just sit still, be alone, or pretend we're okay. In fact, when you keep the wound in silence, the wound will widen, become unkempt and disrupt our function as humans.

However, without realizing it, we ignore the pain and wounds that arise when we don't succeed. The more we don't realize it, the bigger the impact it will hurt us in the future.

There are three psychological wounds that arise as a result of a failure, namely:

Damaging Our Self-Esteem

When someone fails, they often label themselves like, "I'm really stupid", "I really don't deserve to be successful", "what a loser", "you can only be shy", and other similar negative statements. Negative labeling like that only hurts our self-esteem even more. Such labeling also illustrates that we often conclude a failure as a negative thing.

Some think that labeling such a statement can release emotions from failure. However, the more often we fill ourselves with distracting thoughts, the easier it is to internalize them. It's as if we justify ourselves that we are stupid, embarrassing, and pathetic individuals.

Maybe we often remind our colleagues not to curse themselves when experiencing adversity, including failure. However, without realizing it, we also often curse ourselves when we haven't gotten what we want. We even forget to love ourselves.

Weakening Hope

Failures experienced can make us lose hope. Loss of hope makes us want to give up and forget about the possibility of success in the future. We also become pessimistic to try to pursue desires because they feel these desires are difficult for us to achieve.

Have we ever realized that failure is so persuasive that it kills our hopes? Our experiences that have failed to convince us that there is no longer a chance to be happy, to live a perfect life. After believing that, we stop trying.

In addition, failure can also be misleading. It can be misleading because we judge stories that have not been successful in our lives not as shortcomings or trials for our persistence in fighting, but as confirmation that success is indeed something that is impossible to get.

The more we allow ourselves to sink into feelings of pessimism and helplessness, the more we hurt ourselves.

Weakens Confidence and Motivation

We live in the midst of various kinds of pressures and expectations, both internal and external. The pressures that fill our lives contribute to the fear of not succeeding in the future. In addition, the expectations of ourselves or those closest to us also add to our worries. We also become more focused on fear and worry rather than efforts and positive thoughts to achieve what we want.

When we fail, the things that make us afraid and worried come true. Then, it has an impact on the weakening of our self-confidence and motivation. We see ourselves as individuals who are incompetent to achieve success, full of weaknesses, and have dreams that are too big. We seem to be sabotaging our abilities that we will never be able to achieve what we want and there is no point in trying anymore.

Smart Humans Find Reasons

We as humans are good at making excuses, including when we fail. We make various reasons to convince ourselves that failure is normal. Thus, we feel a little more relieved and reduce the fear of failure.

For example, someone has applied for a job both places but nothing has worked. He also considered many influences that made him unsuccessful. When taking the test in the first place, it turned out that his body was not so healthy that he could not maximize. Meanwhile, while on the way to the second place, a traffic jam occurred because someone had an accident. This also made him come late and feel not enough concentration during the test. And some other reasons that we may not realize but we have made when we experience failure.

Failure Is Not Always Bad

The more we get used to looking for reasons behind failure, we will forget to judge the meaning behind the whole event. Examine what is lacking and wrong in us, which we later need to change and develop in the future. Maybe it's not who we are, but what we want doesn't suit us. There are still many other things that we don't know and try, which can be a reference for changing our failures.

Failure is always painful and disappointing, but it can be a valuable experience. We need to be aware of the effects it exerts, feel the hurt and pain it causes, and then figure out how to deal with it. Thus, we are able to strengthen our strength against failure.

Good luck to all of us, who are or have experienced failure. Assume this bitter experience will be a collection of points towards better things later.