So, I am not even going to discuss that. We fail daily in so many areas. And sometimes not always but sometimes we go through several failures, drastic ones, the life-altering ones, the life-altering ones.

They are unavoidable and happens to all of us. Again, that’s not what I am going to talk about today.

How to deal with failure?





Now, there are two types of people that I observed in terms of their ability to handle failure. And I want you to listen to this very very carefully and decide which one you are, ok? And I want you to be very very honest with yourself.





The first one, let’s call this Type-A.





This is the devasted one. When they fail, they feel like the whole world comes crashing down. It’s severe. You feel horrible. You can’t sleep, and when you do you wake up frequently because you have so many nightmares.





I belong to this group. When I fail, I feel like the whole world is ending. Sleepless nights, nightmare, it’s just really really horrible, going through that failure, it always feels like a life and death situation. The intense hormones. But, then, my fight response gets activated.





This is why I love this type of attitude toward failure. Fine, you’re experiencing intense feelings but at the same time, you are gifted the will to fight. You will do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes to get out of it. And that I believe is your superpower.





Now, type B is the one who refuses to acknowledge the fact that they failed. They are under constant misery. It’ll get very interesting please pay attention. Acknowledging is a failure is very destructive to your psychology. It will runin your psyche. And because it’s so destructive, your brain’s first response is to convince you that you may not have failed.





Because in a way, it knows what is coming. It’s tricking you.





This is not uncommon, happens all the time our brains trick us all the time. Your brain doesn’t want you to be happy. Your brain wants you to survive. It feeds you all these BS excuses, Oh, my business failed because of competition, I couldn’t get a good job because I am an Immigrant, or I have an accent, I couldn’t have a good career because I don’t come from a top university, and so forth.





I am sure you heard of these millions of times. And enough time past, you get convinced that you failed because of all those excuses. To convince yourself. They help you live with yourself.





Until one day, you see another person who’s going through the same disadvantage but that person made it happen. That person succeeded. Then, what do you think happens?





All those years. That’s what allowed you to deny failure and continue to have self-respect. Then you see this, another immigrant coming from the even worse background, she made it.





Then what happens is that your entire belief system gets crushed. Say hello to depression. The most severe consequence is not even that. Not even that it may lead to depression. I think it is what happens before that.





As you didn’t acknowledge the failure, and your mind constantly working to give you all these excuses, you find yourself in this weird place, in a place where you get this constant unhappiness. It’s like a hmmm sound, at the back of your mind, all the time, constantly bugging you, you are uncomfortable, you are unhappy all the time. It’s like your brain trying to convince you of these excuses on one side but another part subconsciously reminds you to be unhappy because you don’t deserve it. It’s a constant battle to say happy.





That’s not a quality life to live.





Those who go through this type of failure, they do need external stimuli to maintain their base happiness. Whether it’s a drug, it’s alcohol, or purchasing things you don’t need, shoes, bags, playing video games all day long, watching TV series all day long. But that failure is constantly bugging you in small doses.





Now that’s where the real problem is. And because the dosage of that misery isn’t too intense, but just in small doses, it doesn’t trigger any fight response.





You just are. You just stay in that constant misery without any will to fight. There is no button to press that gives you will to fight. It has to come naturally. That’s why I am extremely sympathetic and understanding towards those who go through this. Most people tend to accuse them and say, “oh you have no intention no will to work hard.” You are lazy. That’s why you fail. Yeah, sure I don’t have the will to fight, but then show me, where is the button? There is no button.





I can’t just turn it on. I can’t just turn on my will to fight. Where is it? Show me?





So, here’s the trick. There is a trick. You have to consciously exude so much effort to convince yourself to acknowledge the failure. And when you don, horrible things are going to happen first, your body is going to dump all those stress hormones, norepinephrine, cortisol, adrenaline. And, but as a result. Your fight response will be activated.





This happens everywhere. You go to school, you spend 1000s of thousands of dollar in your education then you end up working for a c-league, no name employer, barely making ends meet. Not building any career whatsoever. You fool yourself that you are happy. You drink until you pass out on the Weekends.





That’s your external stimuli.





Because you are not happy. You don’t acknowledge the fact that you failed. Until it’s too late and you runin your career and past forward 5 years, none of the multinational want to hire you anymore. You lost the train.





I’ll tell you who is happy with this equation. It’s that employer who got a Stanford MBA for 1/10th the cost.





Now I will give you a weird analogy, Type B lives under cloudy weather without sunshine for years, whereas Type A faces the storm head-on and survives it and it’s sunshine again within a month.





Let me conclude this article.





If you are Type A, I know it’s difficult facing that storm but also I know that you know this, you know that there is sunshine on the other side. Otherwise, you would accept excuses. But you don’t.

Keep up the spirits, continue to take action, and you will get there very very soon. If the storm continues very long and that you forget how the sunshine looks and feel, then do what I do, create a vision board for yourself. Print out the picture of what you want out of life. Put them on a board and hang it on a wall. Somewhere that you can see it easily and constantly. You will see it’ll work. I have one, and it helps me get through the rough days.





If you’re Type B, remember that there is no button for Will to Fight. Face your failure head-on. Don’t’ bury it deep underground. Otherwise, it’ll give you a miserable life of constant unhappiness. You will suffer a bit more at the beginning but you will see that you will eventually be gifted with that power to fight and power to take drastic actions.





You will see the shiny days are coming very soon.