Dealing with failure frustration and getting on track

You will find people who don’t put in the effort and fail is much happier than the one who actually gives their best.

So frustration means you have seriously put in your efforts and the desired result is not achieved but that’s another thing.

First of all pat yourself for giving your best, then after that let’s try to understand why this frustration comes in the first place.

And Let’s see a new point of how we see failures.

In understanding we find solutions.

What does failure means actually?

The actual meaning of failure is that we have a certain result which we or our dear ones do not want . A deviation in desired result.

We plan and do activities and in response to that we get a result, it is neither a failure nor a success.

It is just a result of the activity we do + external factors which are beyond our control.

But in our stupidity, we call it a failure. And once you call it a failure.

You start being afraid of it and hence you get frustrated and finally give up and avoid new things in life.

I myself have the same mindset when I was in college. I get easily frustrated when things don’t go my way.

But after studying the life of Thomas Alva Edison who so-called “failed” 10k times in inventing the bulb.

Express his thought as ” I have not failed 10k times, I just found 10k ways that won’t work”.

Only a child can think this way, he kept his inner genius alive by not rejecting the child inside him.

And this is the logical way of thinking, so we need to avoid using the word “Failure”.

We need to make our mindset like children or Thomas Alva Edison if we really want to get away from frustration.

Society’s wrong mentality toward failure?

I can say it with experience because I am part of a culture where fear plays a big role in our society.

If anyone wants to innovate, everybody around you starts seeing you as a threat to their life.

They start putting pressure and show you the fear of the future.

But it does not ever come to their mind that if everyone was afraid of failure or the future there will be no invention.

And we will be living in the stone age if there was not any innovation.

Any new idea is impossible before it turns into reality.

Can you ever think that 80,000 kg of metal can fly before the invention of the airplane? or we can talk to people 1000 miles away live ?.

Now the airplane is as common as a tree in the past time.

What is the reason for frustration?

Unfulfilled desires are the reasons for frustration ,when you try to control the uncontrollable factors then frustration is bound to happen.

It does not mean desire is a problem, the issue here is our mindset.

How we see the results of actions determines if we improve from the situation or get frustrated and quit.

If we see failure as a full stop then it creates frustration which may further lead to depression.

But if we see failure as a deviation from the result and start improving on the controllable factors like effort, and planning then this is a positive direction.

The formula of facing failure and overcoming challenges?

People like Thomas Alva Edison, Nikola Tesla, B.R. Ambedkar and many people have used it unknowingly.

I have studied their life and found common mindsets which I turn into a formula and applied in my life, that works like charm.

There are two aspects of every work, one is external and one is a mindset.

When they meet failures they take it as a result that does not work, not like their effort is wasted or they are not good enough.

They didn’t change their goal,  if a plan did not work out, they change the course of action but did not change the goal.

2 ) Accept, Learn and grow from failures

If you notice any worthwhile discovery it has three parts.

• Planning
• Execution
• Deviation
• Correction

And the above steps are repeated until the desired results are achieved.

Frustration comes only when you do not accept the results that you have reaped.

And by accepting I do not mean being inactive, it means acknowledging the shortcomings and improving them.

If you keep your mindset this way then you are bound to have achievements not you have to chase them down.

3 ) Putting happiness in performing actions to the best effort, not in their results 

Putting your satisfaction into the result of your work is a sure way to invite frustration.

Because you have to understand that results are dependent on controllable + uncontrollable factors.

How you perform work is totally dependent on your efforts and great efforts lead to great work, hence the result will also be outstanding most of the time.

But if the results are controlling your work then you will be impatient and frustrated throughout the time until you get the desired result.

4 ) Avoid procrastination

Procrastination is resisting force that stop us from starting the work that is necessary.

Procrastination is the worst enemy for a passionate person.

It destroys the most powerful resource we have which is time and reduces productivity.

Solutions – 

• It is resisting force so you just need to start the work and 90 % of the time you will continue to work.
• What I do to trick my mind is, I say let’s do it for only 5 min, and the moment I start doing it I am totally into it.
• The difficult part is starting.
• The moment you start procrastinating something, it should be a trigger to you that it is important and should be attended to right now.

5 ) Result is not in your control but action is

Getting frustrated when your goal is not achieved is very common.

Everybody feels that but those who learn from shortcomings and progress from them are the ones that achieve.

Emotions are not constructive so we need to start working on the actions we can do right now to improve.

And understand that results are byproducts of what we do + external factors and work on the workable and if there are shortcomings we improve.

Takeaway

• Focus on the controllable and learn to accept that are uncontrollable factors and if there is a shortcoming improve.
• Keeping happiness and satisfaction on the work not on the result because you can control your work by the amount of effort but you can not control the result completely.
• I don’t say don’t desire results what I want to say is to keep your level of satisfaction on the efforts you put into work otherwise you will be frustrated throughout the whole journey.