Dealing with failure

There are people in this world who are exceedingly successful in their professions, those with names like Micheal Jordan or Tiger Woods. Then, there are the rest of us who must carry one kind of disappointment or another. While it is easy to say that there is a lot more beyond work, the inability to achieve the high potential one perceives of self is one major source of chronic frustration in life. Some would sacrifice anything for that one elusive goal; others would be constantly distracted from enjoying "ordinary" things; Still others would ultimately give up but feel demoralized and belittled.

There are enough good reasons for paying so much attention to this one aspect of life. We need vindication for our self-worthiness; professional success is an easy way to gauge. We need social acceptance; professional success is a ready yardstick to measure us up. We also see how glamous those successful people are presented and, feeling our own intellectual and creative potential, can easily identify ourselves being as well qualified.

The pain of failure is deep and cyclical. Using the basketball analogy, the also-ran team star starts the season with high promise and confidence, goes through the lengthy season with reasonable success and is defeated by Michael. Next year, he summarizes mistakes made in the previous season, improves himself and doubles his effort. Well, he gets crushed again by Michael. Year in and year out, circumstances change but the result does not; it only gets more painful and frustrating. It does not help that one would soon realize that the biological clock is ticking mercilessly. It feels even worse that the world is indeed full of Michaels who seem to have what we really want.

There are ways to deal with feelings of faillure. We learn to have a more balanced perspective towards life; we try not to compare one-dimensionally with others; and we can certainly keep trying and pin our hope to still another season. What I want to add in this particular piece is a few practical and specific points methods one can use to offset the unplesantness of defeat (obviously I know what I am talking about :)

First of all, failure is not something one can overcome once and for all. It may feel like "if only I could do this, accomplish that" at any point, it is always part of the evolving life for the majority of us. Even for those very successful, there are always higher hurdles to go over. For a goldless athlete (now that it is the Olympic time), having one sounds like the ultimate; but it is not rare to find agony in someone who fails to defend something or measure up historically. In other words, expectation matters when it comes to the definition of failure for a given individual. Since we collectively think very highly of ourselves, we have got to live with failure just as we live with our shadow.

It may not even be all bad- failure certainly makes us more humble and humane, see life in a more vulnerable light and therefore remember to appreciate it as it is, now and then.

Usually failure is not a result of lack of effort although instinctively doubling one's effort is what most of us do. Effort can be better used in having a balanced life "effortlessly". This is not just a healthy perspective; it is quite practical. Having least to sacrifice in order to achieve what we perceive as important helps to reduce anxiety and to focus on the task at hand. Sacrificing one's life, which does make one feel noble, martyr and entittled (of reward), could as easily dampen the glory or make the next round of failure ever more painful. So the paradoxic conclusion here is, if we cannot have something we really want, we should double our effort to achieve everything else no matter how insignificant and easy they seem to be.

Although we use our career achievements to prove something to ourselves or others, often what we really care is achievements but not the career. The lack of respect and fondness towards what we do makes the daily routine painful if success does not come early, easy and frequently. We also tend to chase glorified careers, which is all well except when the societal attention shifts, which happens ever more frequently. So while setting up our ambitious goals, it is important to figure out what we really enjoy doing or at least learn to like what we do.

Ultimately though, one just has to bite the bullets, be strong enough to like oneself even without glory; to seek satisfaction from effort and experience even without success. In fact shrugging off disappointment sometimes is all it takes to feel good again since emotions, even painful ones, do wear off with time. So the shadow may not go away, we can still live a life of richness and fulfillment.