So you’ve failed. Maybe not literally, but you didn’t get the result you anticipated. This can be more than just disappointing, but soul crushing, especially after you’ve put in a ton of effort on something really important. It’s tough. It’s hard and it’s real. You can’t change the past, but you can control and shape the future. If you want to keep moving forward, you have to get back up. There’s no other option.

Here are 5 tips to bounce back after you’ve failed

1. Normalize and Rationalize

When you’ve failed at something, it’s easy to feel like it’s the end of the world. All your hopes and dreams can feel like they’re shattered. Guess what? They’re not. Most importantly of all, the world hasn’t ended. This means you can keep going. Maybe you don’t get a second chance at this, or at least not readily, but you can still keep going. Failure happens all the time, to even the greatest of people. Thomas Edison got kicked out of school. Winston Churchill had to repeat a grade. They went on to be some of the most successful and well known people in history. No one would ever go to say that they were failures in life. They did have to keep going, in order to become those people.

2. Assess the Damage

This can be hard, especially when we have a biological mechanism that makes us run away from things that scare us. It’s totally normal. It even saved our lives back in the hunter gatherer days. However, nothing kills logical thinking, quite like fear. It might actually be empowering to assess the damage and realise that what you were afraid of wasn’t so bad. Because, how else are you going to be able to figure out how to fix things without looking at what had gone wrong? Many times, students think back to how they were so worried or stressed over certain assignments and deadlines, only to ask themselves “What was I so worried about ?”.

Granted, assessing the damage, you may very well find that things are, in fact, just as bad as you think they are. Which means, you’ll have a lot of work to do. Yet, still, it isn’t the end of the world. If you can come to terms with that, you can more readily make a plan of action.

3. Ask yourself: What happened?

There is always a clear cause and effect to everything that has happened. You might not like what you find out but it’s the only way you can figure out what to do next. Ultimately, you’ll be the only one who can figure it out, but there are some good questions you should think about. What happened while you were working? Was it a good environment? Did you understand everything as much as you thought you did? Did you study the right material? How was your time management? Did you get enough sleep? How stressed were you during the entire thing? Fear kills logical thinking, but so does stress. Now is also a good time to learn about study techniques, which we will make a blog post about very soon!

4. Ask for help

People raising their hand to ask a question in a classroom

That’s what we’re here for! That’s also what teachers, professors, TAs, and friends are for. Chances are, they’ve gone through the exact same things you have. They’ve been there, so they can give you advice on how to get out. They also know a lot about your course material and probably about where students mess up, and know the tricks and tips on how to get out. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, instead, it’s a sign of self-awareness. For all you Type A personalities out there, myself included, who always like to be in go, go, go mode, it’s tempting to keep pushing through, but it can be dangerous. You only know so much. Other people may know a lot more.

5.Carry out your plan

Hiking outdoors on a mountain during a beautiful day

It’s one thing to say you’ll do this or that. It’s another thing to actually do it, as we all know. You want results? Take action. My advice is make it easy on yourself. Think you spend too much time on the internet? Download a website blocker. Think you needed to exercise more? Actively schedule time and have work out gear near you. Time management may sound daunting, but studies show that it gives less overall stress than cramming and procrastination. This should help you think better, focus clearer, and achieve the goals you want.

Good Luck out there!

One of the best and worst things about getting back up is, you have to do it. You can’t just stay down, on the ground, feeling sorry for yourself all the time. Take your time, it’s actually a necessary part of the process. Just don’t stay there.

If there’s anything that 2020 has taught all of us, is that sometimes things don't go as planned. There’s a great commencement speech I watched about this. Hopefully it can inspire you in the same way it did for me.

It’s easy to be doing a lot, without always getting everything you want out of it. That is to say, it’s easy to think you’re being productive, without actually producing anything. Ask yourself, are you giving all you have? Deep work requires attention, focus and most easily forgotten of all, intention. The more you intend to give something your undivided attention, the easier it will be.

So sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, good luck out there!

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