Intolerance Of Failure: Why It Appears And How To Combat It, In 4 Keys
We live in a society that pressures us to do our best. However, it does so not by encouraging us to improve in those aspects of life that seem significant to us, but by making us fear the idea of failing.
intolerance of failure It is the consequence of being constantly educated so that each of the steps we take in our lives gives an image of triumph. In this article we will see why this cultural phenomenon is reproduced generation after generation and what we should do to not let it affect us in a suffocating way.
Surely you are familiar with those cases of fathers and mothers who do everything possible to make the lives of their sons or daughters fit into that image that we all have of social and personal success. However, this is something generalized, it does not occur only in these obvious examples. Since our childhood, most family members impose, in a more or less clear and more or less intense way, vital goals. They are routes that we are supposed to travel to fit the idea of success.
Of course, these types of objectives do not coincide exactly with what really interests us, and sooner or later it becomes clear to us that it is not our fault if the activities proposed by adults are not satisfactory.
However, even after we have begun to focus on our interests, there remains something in our way of thinking that has to do with the logic that our fathers and mothers and society in general transmitted to us: perfecting the skills that one possesses, and the fact of show these skills to others, is what speaks about who we are. What gives us value.
Thus, in our adolescence and youth, we identify with references that capture everything we want to become. These examples are inspiring, but as we will see, they also contribute to the fear of failure.
The emotional impact of referents
When someone becomes someone we admire, two things happen. On the one hand, you think about all the positive qualities of that person but not in the negative ones, since the biased vision we have of that reference makes the former eclipse the latter, due to how impressive they are.
On the other hand, the fact that we identify with that inspiring person makes us gain power over the way we create our self-esteem. This means that when it comes to judging our achievements and the performance we demonstrate in various aspects of daily life, these references serve as a horizon.
The people we admire are something with which we compare ourselves with some regularity. However, we do not have as much material with which to compare our failures. As a result, we treat failure as something abnormal, something that shouldn’t be there, even though the underside of all those admired people’s lives is full of it.
To develop talent it is necessary to fail countless times, and in fact during the learning process failures are the norm. However, although we are theoretically aware of this, we often forget it; We act as if it were not true. What we have to do is, therefore, come to our senses again and forget about old complexes and extreme perfectionism which will lead us to block ourselves and not try to start any initiative.
To enter this new philosophy of life, it will be useful for you to follow these tips.
1. Rethink your interests
To begin with, it is necessary to be sure that what constitutes the activity from which we judge who we are and how far we can go is something that really motivates us. If this is not the case, it is normal that the effort put into it is not enough, and therefore only the feeling of failure remains.
2. Set attainable goals
If you set realistic, short-term goals, you will be much less likely to obsess over the small failures that occur as you progress.
3. Record your progress
Document the progress of your projects, so that it is easier and simpler to take into account what you have been achieving. This way you will have the ability to see that the mistakes you make are relative since at the end of the day they are part of a general trend of improvement.
4. Create belief modification routines
It is necessary to make excess perfectionism disappear, and to do so it is necessary to modify beliefs. Although this process is much simpler and more effective with the help of personalized psychological care through the service of professionals, you can try to do it on your own.
To do this, dedicate a couple of moments of the week to write down your impressions about the relationship between your achievements and your failures. First write down how you perceive your failures, and then compare this with how you should perceive them in a more reasonable way, in which it is clear that errors are part of the learning process, and not obstacles.
Then, reflect on those thought patterns that make you fall into intolerance of failure in your daily life. In this way, you will know how to identify the moments in which these beliefs appear.
