Are You Feeling Like A Failure? Here’s What You Can Do

By Perminus Wainaina

“I feel like a failure.”

Have you said these words to yourself or your friend before?

The truth is if nothing is done about it, feeling like a failure is a wound that can persist your whole life.

Keith walked into my office a few months ago and mentioned how, at 38, he felt like a failure because he didn’t have his life together. He had just lost his job and had no idea of where to start from. He felt like it was too late for him to start afresh.

“Where do I go from here? What’s the best thing for me to do?” he wanted to know.

What can failure can look like?

• Getting fired
• Going bankrupt or experiencing financial hardship
• Missing a promotion
• Getting ghosted
• Breaking a diet
• Going through a divorce, sometimes more than once
• Standing by when you wanted to stand up
• Failing to complete a major goal or just your daily task list
• Doing everything right and still losing where it seems to count.
• Something you poured time into coming out all wrong

How do you get over the feeling that you aren’t good enough or that no one around you wants you to participate or even try?

1. Don’t lose hope and accept how you feel

When you’ve failed it will most likely hurt. But don’t lose hope.

Don’t try to push it away by distracting yourself or by trying to push the responsibility onto the rest of the world, and don’t try to paint it over with a smile.

Try to accept it, to let it in, and to hurt for a while instead of trying to reject it all and to keep it away. Because when you let it in and accept it, it will go faster and in the long run be less painful to process what has happened.

If you reject how you feel then those emotions will pop up at unexpected times later on and can make you moody, pessimistic, angry, or sad.

2. Remember that you’re not a failure, but just had a setback

When you’ve had a setback it’s very easy to start thinking that you will always keep failing in this area of your life. It’s easy to start thinking that you are indeed a failure.

Instead, remind yourself that just because you failed today or yesterday doesn’t mean that you’ll fail the next time.

The truth is that this won’t last for the rest of your life if you keep moving forward if you take action and you keep learning.

3. Be constructive and learn from the situation you faced

See your failure more as valuable feedback and something you can use to improve rather than only a big blow and setback.

Ask yourself questions that can increase your positive attitude.

Questions like:

• What’s one thing I can learn from this?
• How can I adjust my course to avoid making the same mistake and likely do better next time?
• What’s one thing I can do differently the next time?

Take some time with these questions and be honest with yourself as you answer them.

4. Remind yourself: that anyone who wants to do great things has gone through all the struggle

Oftentimes, you will hear about people’s successes. But the path to those milestones tends to have many setbacks. The story of someone’s success may seem only bright and fast-moving in what’s told in the media or we see in our mind.

You are not the only one who has failed.

5. Find inspiration and support from a mentor

A conversation with someone you trust can be very helpful and make you feel better.

Another thing you can do is to learn from those who’ve gone where you want to go. Try to communicate with them and find your way. You may face many struggles first but you are going to set a new way.

Finally

See each day as a new shot at courage—a new day to practice learning from mistakes and applying that learning to the next big risk. It is okay to fail in life because that does not mean that you fail for life. Nobody has ever succeeded without first failing in some way.

Don’t ever lose hope. 

Perminus Wainaina is the C.E.O and Managing Partner at Corporate Staffing Services, a leading HR consultancy firm based in Westlands. Through career mentorship programs, he assists mid-level and senior professionals get solutions to complex and challenging career issues that they are facing.