Coping With Failure: 8 Psychological Strategies

Dealing with failure and the emotions that come when things don’t turn out the way we expected is something we deal with on a daily basis. When faced with a new project, be it economic, academic or personal, the same question always comes to mind: what if I fail? There is no issue that scares us more or is as important to us as success. Have you ever tried to find a good strategy for getting back up after you fall? This is often the key to success…

Being able to overcome failures, problems, frustration, or even stress can mean the difference between being successful and falling down. So to achieve success it is not only important to work on your goals, but also to know how to deal with failure.

What do we mean by success?

Success depends on the situation and the person. It is most associated with money and work. A good salary and a good job. However, we can also be successful in many other areas of our lives. Social attraction, the quality of our social relationships, finding a partner who fully connects with us…

We won’t always get what we want. But by knowing how to deal with these kinds of situations, we can handle them better and even use them to become stronger.

What do we mean by coping?

Coping consists of a series of thoughts, cognitive processes that direct our behavior towards solving the problem. We are constantly changing the way we move forward, depending on the resources we have or the demands that our environment (or ourselves) generates.

What are coping mechanisms? You may think they are specific and planned processes. However, any reaction we have to an event (good or bad) will trigger a coping mechanism. For example, crying after a breakup is a kind of coping mechanism and one of the ways we deal with failure. As well as going out to party with your friends, going to the gym to ‘unplug’, watch all your favorite movies in a row. These are all different but equally legitimate ways to manage our bad feelings.

General coping strategies

Let’s look at two types of coping strategies:

• Problem-solving strategies – these focus on changing the problem. The problem caused the bad feelings, so by changing it, we also change the situation.

• Emotional regulation strategies – these involve adjusting our emotional response to the problem. This is a self-monitoring mechanism. We adapt the solution to the problem.

Not all strategies resolve conflict positively. We could respond in any way at any given time. However, the emotional consequences that come later may not be helpful in coping with our failure. On the contrary, they could make the situation even worse. For example, if we react by yelling (emotional regulation) at someone who has hurt us, the situation will continue. We perpetuate the pain, only deepening the conflict.

Dealing well with failure

Lazarus and Folkman are true leaders in looking at how we deal with failure and its consequences. They evaluated and classified the thoughts and actions that help us cope with the problems and stress we face throughout our lives.

In the end, they came up with eight strategies that included both problem solving and emotional regulation. Each strategy consists of a series of behaviors or thought processes. These are forms that include different methods people have for solving problems. Lazarus and Folkman collected this data through the famous Ways of Coping Questionnaire .

Strategies for coping well with failure

• Confrontation – a person returns to reality in an attempt to change it. To try again. Sometimes this strategy involves risks. Namely, it means that someone has to invest more resources to get another chance or to ensure success the second time around.

• Distancing – the opposite of confrontation. In this case, someone is trying to distance themselves from what happened. Especially in terms of responsibility, he tries to minimize his role in what happened.
• Self-control – a person focuses on regulating his emotions. This does not mean that he is not doing anything, but that he is only taking action mentally.
• Social Support – this strategy is based on finding support in our environment. Sometimes we can better focus on the problem by externalizing our feelings. Talking to other people who listen and offer advice can help us see things from a different perspective.
• Taking responsibility – recognizing the role each person played in what happened. By accepting that we ourselves also have little responsibility, we can better focus on solving our problems.

• Escape or avoid – we fantasize about possible solutions, but don’t take action. Other strategies belonging to this group may be slightly more active, but may also belong to the avoidance category: eating, drinking, smoking, etc.
• Making plans – thinking about and developing possible strategies to solve the problem. As a way to confront. Making plans can also include drawing a mind map. This is then an attempt to minimize the losses associated with the failure.
• Positive re-evaluation – noticing positive aspects that may arise from the failure. In other words: ˝look on the bright side.˝

Failure is an opportunity

Life is a constant lesson. It’s rare that things go the way we want, which is why we may feel frustrated or feel like we’ve failed. This is normal, there is nothing special about it. Our ability to grow and get a return on our investment is reflected when we begin to use our emotional resources to deal with failure. This will give us life lessons that will make us wiser.