Learn to fail well

Handling and learning from failure is a skill that will ensure you achieve your goals. Like boxing, in life also there is no dishonour in falling down. You lose only when you fail to get up. “Learning to fail well is important,” said Rahul Dravid, renowned cricketer at a camp for teenage cricketers.  

World Mental health day is celebrated in October. The key element of mental health is the capacity to deal with the ups and downs of life. The capacity to deal with failure enhances our capacity to have healthy relationships, make good life choices, maintain physical health and well being. 

So how do we recover from failure and even make it a stepping stone to success? Embrace the experience of failure. Feel the pain, grieve and learn from it. Then get up and go. If the failure shatters you and makes you feel there is nothing left to live for, get professional help from a therapist. Never failing means you are not leaving your comfort zone. Failure, properly handled, is good for you and makes you a more compassionate person.

Focus on the present. Be gentle with yourself. Take care of your health. Introduce a few happiness breaks into every day: activities that definitely make you happy. Meet positive friends. The past is over and no one knows the future. The present is yours to shape. It is a gift. Enjoy it.

Get help to develop a plan for what to do next. Lay down the burdens of yesterday and develop choices for what to do tomorrow. This is a time of freedom, when you can recreate your life and leave behind what you don’t like. Choose to do something you love that you have never pursued seriously. Something that makes you feels blissful.  Do something for others. It will give you a jolt of bliss. Reach out to someone who cannot do anything for you. Failure can be God’s greatest gift to you. Enjoy it!

The writer is the author of Everyday Happiness Mantras