How to get over failure and move on

Nobody wants to fail. Be it a failure in a school exam, sports match, job interview, relationship, or business. It is painful and often accompanied by shame.

I still remember how painful it was when I failed a job interview. I really wanted that job. I could picture myself with the vast opportunity I would be able to achieve had I got the job. It was at a big multinational company, the leader in the market. I believed I had the right skills, experience, and attitude for it. I could tell I passed the first interview with flying colors from the way the interviewer concluded the interview. And yet, in the second round of interviews, I could feel something was not right from the start. And truth be told, I received the rejection letter from the recruiter a few days later.

I was very disappointed in myself. How could I fail at it? I did my preparation, I spent two weeks preparing every night and weekend for it. I anticipated all the common questions, prepared good answers, and rehearsed them. And yet I failed.

It was painful.

It happens to me, and it happens to everyone, including you.

A failure is indeed painful, but it should not destroy you. It should not traumatize you that it makes you afraid to move on.

This is how to get over failure and move on:

• Identify and acknowledge your feelings. When faced with failure and all the painful feelings associated with it, people may try to dismiss and forget them, in the hope of quickly getting over them and moving on. But, this is not good. You may think that you get over it, but if they are not identified and acknowledged, they may just be buried into your subconsciousness. They may resurface anytime with an even stronger effect if you experience a similar failure again. You should acknowledge the pain, the sadness, the shame. Accept the pain. Let yourself cry it out. You would be relieved and feel better.
• Failure can happen to anyone. Anyone! You may keep asking yourself, why it happened to you? Did you do something wrong that God punish you? Is it bad karma that makes you fail? Well, keep this in mind, failure is a part of life, as it is for success. Every single second, there are countless people experiencing failures and successes. It can happen to anyone. It is not the end, it is just a part of your journey.
• Focus on the positive part of failure and grow from it. You must be thinking why would there is any positivity out of a failure? Well, there is. That is a very valuable experience. Not just an ordinary experience, but a special experience that can only be gotten through painful failure. There is a saying that a writer can only write a masterpiece after experiencing a tragedy. What went wrong? Why did it fail? You may not be able to tell the whole reasons for the failure right away, but now that you have accepted the failure, you would be able to analyze it calmly. Take your time. You would be able to gain insight from it.

Conclusion.

Failure can happen to anyone. It is a normal thing in life. Even the greatest men and women in the world experience failures. Accept your failure. Cry over it. Experience and learn from it. Pick yourself up and move on with your life. You have so much more to experience in life. Enjoy the journey.