Let’s be honest and get this out of the way right from the beginning: failing sucks but failure at work can be even worse because it’s in front of people you typically see almost every day. Yet, it is inevitable for all of us to experience failure at work. And as more problems arise that greatly affect our lifestyle, many of us have been facing failure more than expected.
We’re continually making more and more mistakes—way more than any of us I’m sure would like to admit. These situations are worsened even further when the people we work with call attention to our failures at work. It can be very challenging to cope with these mistakes and failures, but doing so is an important part of growth. So, I’m going to give you ways on how you can bounce back from a failure at work. When our coworkers highlight our professional shortcomings, these circumstances become considerably worse. Although dealing with these errors and failures can be extremely difficult, doing so is crucial for growth. So let me share with you some strategies for recovering from a work failure.
1. Failure at Work Isn’t Uncommon
The first thing to realize is that professional failure is by no means unusual. Everyone else makes mistakes, just as you do. Simply put, the demands on our time at work are increasing too quickly, and it feels impossible for us to keep up, let alone move ahead. These conditions make these workplace blunders, errors, and failures unavoidable.
Don’t waste time feeling humiliated when you make a mistake at work; the strain is enough to drive anyone to break. You are well-positioned to start overcoming the uncomfortable emotions and effects of these situations when you learn to accept failure at work as an inevitable part of the process. Just keep in mind that mistakes and failures can be lessons for us to learn from and help us improve if you’re coping with personal blunders or failures.
2. Overcome Negativity Associated With Failure at Work
If you’ve ever failed at work, you’re aware that these situations can be a little rough on your ego. It is an unchanging reality. But as I just said, if you learn how to handle these breakdowns and the stress that comes with failing at work, you’ll be able to recover fast and get back on your game so you can succeed the next time!
This procedure will assist you in controlling the disappointment and probable humiliation brought on by a professional failure and make sure that these bad feelings don’t keep you down for an extended period of time. You must investigate what transpired in order to learn to control the disappointment and negativity that you frequently experience after failing at work.
That implies that you must consider the circumstances that occurred. Describe the positive and negative aspects of the event. Why did things go smoothly the way they did? Why did things go wrong the way they did? You will gain valuable insights and a greater sense of self-awareness by responding to questions of this nature. You will learn from this experience and be better prepared to do a work of a similar nature in the future.
3. Prepare for the Negativity
In addition to examining the situation, there are a few common emotions associated with failures at work. A few of them I’ve already mentioned previously in this article. Learning to be on the lookout for these types of thoughts and emotions following making a mistake or error at work—or in any other part of your life—will help you better cope with them whenever they do attempt to take a shot at your mental health. These could be many things such as embarrassment, disappointment, identity conflict, feeling worthless and useless, feeling like you have no value to add, feeling like everyone around you is better than you are, etc. There’s probably an endless list we could come up with here because as humans, we—for some reason—love to beat ourselves up, especially given all our past mistakes and failures.
If you permit this, though, your ideas and feelings will run amok in your brain and harm your mental health. Hence, just as if you were getting ready to engage in combat with another person, you’re going to plan your approach to handle these feelings before they ever arise. By doing this, you’ll put yourself in a good position to deal with these feelings. Never undervalue the value of being simply prepared. One of the most helpful actions I’ve ever done has helped me stay strong after a professional failure. You will acquire a very valuable set of abilities if you give it a shot and create a plan or strategy that makes sense for you and is pertinent to your life and area of work.
4. Reflect, Admit, Apply, and Repeat
Once you’ve developed your new approach, it’s time to try to reflect on your existing coping mechanisms. These are the ones where, after making a mistake, you go cry about it, become defensive, and then go eat a lot of ice cream to try to make yourself feel better. Obviously, you can’t keep employing that tactic because it is ineffective.
So, take some time to consider how you are coping right now. Why are you behaving that way? Is it an effort on your part to disguise the uneasiness you feel inside? Or is there another explanation? Once you’ve identified the cause, acknowledge it to yourself, realize that this is how you’ve always behaved and that a change has to be made.
From here, you may start retraining yourself so that you stop becoming defensive and eating ice cream and instead focus on developing self-awareness and learning from your mistakes. This is a crucial first step in understanding how to recover from failure at work. This is so you may start using the new techniques you’ve just built for yourself and form new behavioral patterns and habits that are much more advantageous to your personal growth and advancement once you’ve done this and attained that self-awareness.
The method is then repeated as the last stage. I would advise going through some variation of this process of reflection and review if you experience professional failure or make a mistake in another aspect of your life. You can adapt and adjust your strategies as well as develop and grow as a person by repeating this process.
5. Take Responsibility
These people, who believe they are always innocent no matter what part they played or how much they contributed to the outcome, are people we all know. They are “finger-pointers,” these people. Before they even evaluate their own role in the outcome, they will point the finger at everyone else.
I feel bad for these individuals. They often aren’t looked up to by their peers for this behavior, and they’ll end up moving forward much more slowly than the rest of us who are prepared to own up to our mistakes and accept responsibility. No one likes to work with someone who can’t take ownership of their own actions and decisions, so do your best to avoid becoming a “finger-pointer” if you mess up, especially if it’s at work.
I understand that it’s not always simple to take responsibility for your actions and admit mistakes, especially when there are repercussions. Yet, how much accountability you have is crucial to your development as a person.
