How to Bounce Back from Failure - College Info Geek

Key Takeaways

So, you failed a test or maybe this entire semester's just been terrible and you feel like the whole thing has been a failure and now your life basically boils down to nothing but this. Where do you go from there? Well, that's what I want to talk about today. And I feel like this video boils down really to just two main points. Number one, failure is not the end of the world. It's not nearly as bad as you think it is, and it happens to absolutely everyone. And number two, learning from that failure, becoming resilient to it, and retrying in a smarter way. These are all essential skills to learn. And I think failure seems so monumental and terrible because we don't talk about it. Even though it happens to everyone, none of us wants to like be vulnerable enough to put our failures out there. It's uncomfortable. So, we tend to just sort of project our successes and keep the failures bottled up inside. And each of us has to deal with them alone. So, that's where I want to start. I want to put a few of my own personal demons and failures out there to let you know that if you're currently dealing with a failed test or something else, we're both standing on the exact same playing field. Off just the top of my head, I can think of two instances where I failed exams in college. There was a physics exam I failed during my freshman year. And then in my junior year, there was a core part of my major, a computer networking class, and I failed an exam because I was just like not paying attention during that semester. And those two failures were pretty bad, but they pale in comparison to something that happened in high school that I have not wanted to talk about ever since it happened. But I'm going to put it out there because hopefully it's useful to you guys. So, in high school, my senior year, I got this really cool part-time job. And I worked a lot of part-time jobs in high school, ever since I was 14, in fact. But this one was really cool, which makes it all the more worse that I only was there for 3 months. And I was only there for 3 months because I got fired. and not because of some like politics or like the economy or whatever or like Godzilla was about to like smash my cubicle. I got fired because I was crappy at my job and I didn't respect the position and they fired me totally justifiably. It was like a flat on my face failure. And I remember walking out of the building. I was like, "That's it. My life is over. No one will ever hire me again. Why would they hire me? I've already violated somebody's trust." And I was like, "Might as well give up now, right?" But looking back, everything was fine. I still went to college. I had a lot of part-time jobs in college. I did really well at all of them. I even went to a full-time internship and now I'm running my own business because I learned from those mistakes. And with the exams, it was the exact same thing. I learned from my mistakes. I learned that I wasn't paying attention. I had to buckle down. And that's what those failures were. There were just valleys in this overall crazy graph trend of our life's progress because it isn't just this linear nice curve upward. There's going to be peaks and valleys, successes and failures. Hopefully, the overall trend is upward, but it's really volatile. So, if you find yourself in a valley right now of failure, that's just part of your journey. You're going to get out of it. But how do you get out of it? What's the best way to potentially get out? Well, that's what the rest of this video is about. And I really think it boils down to six steps in a process. And I want to lay this process out for you. But first, I just got to warn you. Near the end of this video, I am going to drill into your soul. Okay? Maybe nothing that heavy, but I am going to take I'm going to say some words to you that might pull you out of your warm little comfort zone because I think you might need to hear them. But let's lay the foundation first with that six-step process. The first step is to figure out, do you need to do damage control right away? Is there some sort of reaction that the failure warrants right away to make sure that like further bad stuff doesn't happen? For instance, maybe you just completely skipped the test for some reason. Well, obviously you need to contact the professor right away to see if there's any way you can make up the test because obviously it wasn't your fault that ninjas attacked you on your way to the testing center. It just happens. Like these things happen and hopefully your professor will understand. But if you have if you found out that there's basically nothing you need to do right away, you just need to kind of move on over time gradually, then I think the first thing to do is to give yourself some distance from the problem. Like right away failures seem monumental. They seem earthc crushing like everything is bad and your emotions are just blaring sirens in your brain and you really can just only give yourself distance. There's nothing really good that's going to happen right away because you need to let these emotions subside. So sleep on it or talk with a friend, vent a little bit or play a stupid video game and forget the world. And once those emotions do go away, then that's when logic can take over and start to do some more useful stuff. And at that point, what you need to do is to figure out what caused the failure. Like when you play a video game and you die, you do retry, but you're also trying to figure out like why did I die? Okay, this pit was too far to jump over without getting a running start first, so now I need to run. Identifying the points of failure is critical for retrying and succeeding. That's what engineers do and that's what you need to do. So figure out what was it that caused me to fail this test. Was I overwhelmed? Did I just take too hard of a class? Did I need a tutor? Or was I just completely like distracted and unmotivated to pay attention in class? Now once you figured out the problem, once you figured out the most likely cause, then the next step is to develop a plan for retrying in a smarter way, adapting and dealing with that point of failure. You can't just try in the exact same way, right? That's the definition of insanity. So if you were like unmotivated to study, then maybe you need to get like a tutor or just an accountability buddy or maybe you need to say like, I'm not going to study in my dorm. I'm going to commit myself to going to the library three days a week. I'm going to meet with my study buddy and we're going to study for at least three hours cumulatively over the week. Now you've got that plan. And step five is to retry just like you do in a video game. And also the last step, be willing to ask for help if you need it. I've had some people who have asked questions on my videos and the comments being like, "How do I get help because I'm too embarrassed or too scared to ask for help in class because I don't want to look stupid." And that couldn't be further from the truth. Asking for help is showing that you're smart enough not to accept ignorance out of pride or some fear of embarrassment. And now that you've failed something, you know for a fact the writing is on the wall that you're not above needing help. So if people are willing to provide assistance, be humble enough to accept it. If you're like on a sinking ship and somebody comes by in a rowboat to save you, jump on that rowboat. So that is the process for dealing with failure. And to end this video, I just want to give you a little bit of motivation because to be honest, a lot of people, and this is a sad truth, but a lot of people just kind of let life happen to them. And a lot of people let their past decisions, past bad decisions, and past failures set the course for the rest of their lives. Don't be one of those people. Very few failures will keep you down and prevent you from retrying and building back up. Most failures, as long as you're willing to work and willing to analyze what caused a failure, most of them are just opportunities for you to get smarter and for you to adapt and for you to become resilient. In a speech she gave at Harvard University back in 2008, JK Rowling once said that the knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive. Failure is not the end. It's just an opportunity to gain insight. So, if you don't like where your past failures and past decisions have gotten you, then start looking at what caused those failures and retry in a smarter way. Or to reframe that statement, if you don't like who you were yesterday, then be willing to put some steps into action today and tomorrow and the next day to start changing that person. Now, hopefully I didn't get too heavy at the end here for you, and hopefully this video was helpful to you in some way. Either way, thanks so much for watching, and as always, I'll see you next week. [Music]