Post No.: 0903
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Not losing isn’t the same as winning – you can avoid losing by simply not participating in something or not trying anything, but that won’t help you to succeed. If you perpetually avoid certain activities that you personally find challenging, even in private, because you worry about sucking at them then you’ll never gain the practice to improve and eventually excel at them. You can protect your self-esteem but it’ll be a self-delusion.
Resilience is more about accepting that failures happen, using them as learning opportunities, and trying again. It’s handling adversity with grace, having the courage to face challenges, being accountable for mistakes, and bouncing back from setbacks in a healthy and constructive way.
The most successful people fail, the most often, because they try the most. The more you try, the more you’ll fail, but the more you’ll also learn, improve and win! If you’re not a professional cricketer and don’t play cricket as a hobby, you’ve probably been bowled out far fewer times than the best cricketer in the world, or you might’ve never been bowled out ever and so can boast a ‘100% no lose’ streak – but who’s the far more successful cricketer? Did you know that Martina Navratilova has never beaten me in a tennis match?(!) It’s also empty to mock those who’ve failed at something if one has never tried that something oneself. Those who come last in a competition at least took part and perhaps even qualified to get that far, which is more than what most of those who like to ridicule such folk have achieved. You miss 100% of the shots you never take, as they say.
If you don’t ‘slide off the track’ occasionally then you’ll never know where the limits are. You’ll never know what your full potential is, or never live your life to the fullest. So failure should be accepted, and maybe even praised – as long as the risks are reasonable rather than arrogant or foolish that is.
The training ground is the main place to make errors and learn that they happen and how to bounce back from them, which in turn frees sportspeople to express their skills and creativity.
In general, review successes first then mistakes, and then only review mistakes from the perspective of seeking to improve for the future i.e. ‘what should we do next time?’ rather than ‘we should’ve done this or that’.
So when things go wrong – think ‘what must I do to make things right from here?’ Work out how to improve and never repeat the same mistakes again. It’s about learning your lesson and growing rather than dwelling on the past. Concentrate on the solution more than the problem. Treat it as a test or challenge. Find out how others who’ve bounced back from similar setbacks did it?
Ask why something failed? The persistent conclude that setbacks are caused by things that can be changed. They believe nothing is permanent or unsolvable. As Furrywisepuppy said in Post No.: 0897 – failure is a teaching tool to improve and fundamentally adapt what you’re doing until you attain success! Try again, with a new approach if required.
Failures for ‘trying too hard’ aren’t really about the excessive amount of effort put in but the incorrect approach employed when doing something. It’s more informative to say ‘doing too much’. Caring, trying and putting in effort should never be discouraged when poor decisions, planning or execution should.
Although not all change is an improvement, change is necessary for improvement. Not all change is progress, but progress is a change. Yet most of us, most of the time, are resistant to change even when it’s for our benefit. (It’s classically easier to tell others they need to change than to carry through a personal change within ourselves, whether for our sake or for others!) Growth only happens when we push beyond our present limits or comfort levels.
All major changes should absolutely first be questioned, mapped out, then reviewed after implementation, though – we shouldn’t stand against progress but overconfidence can be disastrous. It’s like why no business should start without a business plan, or why no major new technology that’ll impact lives should be introduced without scrutiny. When people say ‘failure isn’t an option’ – it’s still a distinct possibility if we don’t approach things with the appropriate amount of caution. When things aren’t going well, we do tend to think that change is warranted, and that ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’. A gamble perhaps offers us hope. But what we ask or vote for can be worse. (We’ve seen this many times when a new football manager does worse than the old one!) We can be too greedy and jeopardise or take for granted what we’ve presently got. If something appears wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean the direct opposite extreme must be right. During moments of hype and hysteria (especially within an echo chamber), one mustn’t just focus on the potential benefits but also the potential costs of an idea.
Yet we do need to constantly adapt in the face of ever-shifting times and environments. Things are changing around us even if we aren’t. We must continually query and critique our present laws, governance, cultures, philosophies, beliefs, etc. rather than acquiesce with whatever we’re given or hold anything as sacrosanct. We constantly need to seek to intellectually and socially improve and grow.
The necessary adaptation can come from yourself, the community and/or the broader world. It could be a change of a situation or of the attitude towards that situation. You can do something about it or at least play your part in effecting it. As long as you’ve still got a voice or a way to communicate – you can still make a difference. If things repeatedly aren’t working, the answer isn’t the same old things. You could change your skills or change a strategy – many of the barriers lie within you hence you have a tremendous deal of control to shape your outcomes. It helps to believe you can always change your life – all you have to say is when…
The motivated take constructive feedback well; especially feedback that wasn’t expected. Never be afraid of facing the facts otherwise you’ll fail to modify your behaviour. So seek and welcome feedback and don’t hide or distract yourself from what may be (brutally) said about you – know and accept your flaws and strive to improve. (Therefore when giving other people feedback – be honest and constructive. But be careful not to dishearten them, which can result in self-denial. Make the change seem possible and within reach for them.)
If you’re arrogant then you’re not going to be flexible enough to adapt to new situations or when you’ve been proven wrong. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. A bit of tweaking to your plans sometimes won’t be enough – sometimes it requires a fundamental internal change to succeed. Fear being wrong periodically because when you think you’re right, you stop looking and listening and you stop seeking to improve your knowledge or strategy. You get complacent or deluded. Winners adapt until they succeed – they’re made, not born. Meow.
We should aim to reduce the ‘frictions’ or obstacles in our lives. Yet is convenience always good for us? Don’t we grow and find more meaning from experiencing a struggle? A lot of learning and growth is pain, at least in terms of expending energy and effort. Don’t we learn more from our mistakes and losses than non-events or wins? Discomfort is often a sign of learning. So a challenging lesson can improve and strengthen a pupil.
If it’s too tough and it ends up ultimately weakening the pupil however then the teacher will have gone too far on this occasion. It’s ultimately about finding that balance between stifling growth through mollycoddling someone and stifling growth through not helping them sufficiently. Neither extreme achieves optimal growth. Seek the optimum area between too easy and too hard as parents, teachers or leaders towards our children, pupils or team. (A hand-out is better than no welfare but is a hand-up even better? Governments must find that middle ground between excessive senses of entitlements and leaving the vulnerable to suffer.)
We all have good and bad times according to the natural rhythms of life, but no matter how down we may feel – view it as only ever a temporary state. View it as ‘what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!’ It’s about not giving up on life. No one can feel great all of the time but if you try your fluffy best to keep positive then great things will be around the corner again. (In ‘survival in the wilderness’ contexts – the will to survive is the single biggest factor for surviving.) This doesn’t necessarily mean repeating the same approaches or even keeping the same goals – for contentment or showing more appreciation for what you’ve already got is one way to adapt and grow too. ‘When you’re down, the only way is up.’ Sometimes such aphorisms are trite but they can work to gee us up! We need the pains to fully appreciate the joys anyway. (Always having life too easy is the root cause of feelings of entitlement and weaknesses e.g. rather than feeling happy with a full stomach, we’ll only feel happy with the most luxurious food).
Grit and the feeling of ‘I can do this’ depends on many situational factors and not just one’s personality though – such as an environment that helps or hinders the persistence, enjoyment or ability to do an activity (e.g. learning that an industry is systemically prejudiced against a certain gender or ethnicity isn’t going to inspire someone affected to partake or persevere in it). We must take responsibility for our own lives yet understand how everyone’s lives are socially, emotionally and practically interconnected with everyone else’s. We mustn’t behave like victims yet we need to highlight and tackle any injustices that exist rather than let them endure without resistance.
Backhanded compliments are like ‘you’re good for your age’. But there are backhanded insults too like ‘I expected better from you’, where someone believes you can do more than you just did i.e. it sounds like a criticism but it’s because they believe you can achieve greater.
If anyone calls you incompetent or stupid then understand that these generalised sweeping statements are never informative or ultimately true. If anyone critiques specific behaviours of yours in a constructive manner then you can, and perhaps should, take these on board and improve on them with a growth mindset. Praises should also really be about specific behaviours and attitudes too. No one is ever universally good or bad.
Unmanageable anxiety stems from over-thinking about a negative event that might happen in the future – thus the solution is to mindfully focus back on the present. One could even use fear as an ally to sharpen one’s senses and get physiologically prepared, or to assess risks properly and heed real dangers to one’s life or another’s, and to ask whether one is doing something for the right reasons (e.g. winning at what cost?) One could visualise the outcome one fears materialising and then query what’s the worst that could realistically happen? Will it all matter in a few months? Could you try again another time?
If you’re struggling to comprehend something you’re trying to learn – try again the next day. It’s not about giving up but understanding how your brain works because you need to sleep in order to ‘bank’ what you’ve learned so far and to let your unconscious work some more on the problems you’ve been struggling with during the day. You might naturally start to feel sleepy exhausted when your brain is trying to memorise so many new lessons at once.
Meow. You cannot expect to learn everything in one day, so try again tomorrow. Improvement and growth takes time.
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