It comes a point of time when you ask yourself – who am I? What am I made of? Am I really a ____ person? It’s so common for an individual to feel that [...]]]> photo credit: me and the sysop

It comes a point of time when you ask yourself – who am I? What am I made of? Am I really a ____ person? It’s so common for an individual to feel that failure is a bad thing because we have gotten used to the fact that failing is bad.

In reality, failure is socially unacceptable. In organizations, people are usually not allowed to fail. There’s a double standard from top executives when they say “I can tolerate failure — as long as it doesn’t cost me anything”.

The truth is we all have failed, and we know how it feels. But dealing with failure isn’t as simple as you may think. Sure, you can attend a program and work out your “traumatic past” and stuff. But to be honest, you will definitely want to reach into yourself using the process of submodality work and alter your experience or perception of failure.

Here’s a strategy:
Step 1: Assess the feeling behind the failure.

What exactly are you feeling? Is it anger? Fear? Anxiety? Disappointment? Disgruntled? Once you know what you are feeling, it becomes easier for you to know what happened.

Step 2: Assess your values.
If you are angry at the failure, you will have to ask, what is the difference between being angry at failing compared with angry that someone was late for an appointment? Something got violated – your values. Ask yourself: what is the reason why you got angry? Be honest and let it come out. This is where you start finding out through a constant assessment of the “purpose” of your anger.

If you are angry, it could be because you knew you could do it but something happened that interrupted you, causing you to miss your target. Maybe the purpose of your anger was to show you that you were capable of achieving the target but you just lost your concentration for that moment. Now, there’s a message here, and you will need to heed your own advice. There’s always something to learn about yourself.

Step 3: Learn what you need to learn and then focus on what you need to do instead.

In order to activate your resources, remember that you can make your images of your failure more distant, smaller, darker and less focused. Send that into the distance. In place of that, bring into your mental screen a bigger, clearer image of what you want instead, and imagine that in full, vivid intensity.

Repeat this several times in quick succession.

Of course, we would like a strategy so that we won’t even need to fail. Is that possible? Well, I’ll take a look at that at a later post. In the meanwhile, your comments are appreciated.