Reframing Failure as a Platform for Growth

Before I graduated from University, one of my friends asked me whether I had any regrets from my 3 years at university. At the time I felt I did have many regrets. I was in a terrible headspace, I didn’t really know what my graduate plans were, and I was unsure about some of the people I had around me. I felt that I had failed in certain aspects of my life such as fitness goals, career goals, and dating goals. I felt quite lost at that time, to be honest.

At home I decided to create a collage to decorate my room with. This is a collage consisting of my favourite people, places, personal art, and memories from as far back as I can remember. Typically whenever I look at the pictures on the wall, I smile at the memories created. A different memory pops into my mind each time I look at the wall. Recently, when I looked at the wall, my mind immediately identified the memories I made at University. People that I met, experiences I had, communities I had been a part of. I realised right away, the legacy of my time at university wasn’t the regrets and mistakes that led to me being in a difficult place at the end of my final year, it was all of the experiences I had and memories I made whether they were good or bad. All of them have led to the person that I am today. Whilst I have a long way to go, those experiences were necessary in shaping future versions of me that are better, wiser, and more durable than the old ones. They have reshaped my mentality towards regret and failure and in this piece I’m going to deep dive into that. 

As I have alluded to, since I graduated from university, my mindset towards failure has very much shifted. It not only often presents an opportunity to improve, it’s also often about perception. I’ll set a hard goal for myself and set a deadline for it, much like how I operate and work in my professional life. If I fall short, I’d lament my inability to reach the goal. My confidence and self belief takes a hit. But did I ever take a second to stop and think about the type of person I was becoming due to the work I have done/were doing to reach this goal? The resilience I was are building, the understanding of how to tweak my methods, habits, and practices, the deeper understanding I was are gaining of myself and where my strengths and weaknesses lie. Now that I have done so, I understand that the only failure would be to quit or to approach my goals and aspirations with pessimism and fear.

Something I struggled with for a long period of time was the tendency to pedestalize certain goals use them as the metric of my success or lack of success. So for me, when I would chase these goals and inevitably face failures and difficulties, I would interpret it as me failing or going wrong. I even went as far as to question myself and my abilities entirely because of my inability to achieve what I wanted. When I faced this repeated failure, it affected my confidence and belief in myself. 

Failure in Fitness

There are a few areas in which this exact problem really affected me. The first area was with my fitness goals. I set a goal at the start of 2024 that I would get into the best shape I’ve ever been in. However as the year went on, I saw myself really falling short of this goal. 4-5 months into the year, I hadn’t been able to show the type of discipline and consistency I needed to reach that goal. What it led to was a massive drop in confidence and also a frustration within myself. Instead of going back​​ to the drawing board and figuring out why I was falling short and how I could help myself get on the right track, I saw this as a sign that I was failing in general. It massively affected my self esteem and view of myself. I fell into a very negative mentality regarding this aspect of my life. I was extremely hard on myself and started to bash myself in every aspect of my fitness and body. What did that lead to? Me giving up. By doing this, the issue was massively compounded and I started to struggle with binge eating and dietary issues. This became one of the biggest challenges/struggles that I faced that year and was extremely tough to overcome.

Really, I only started to overcome this struggle once I was able to change my mindset and focus instead on what steps I could take to help myself, rather than focusing on mistakes I had already made and regrets I had. Furthermore, this year I have learnt from the lessons of last year when it comes to the devastating impacts of what happens when you view your imperfections and disappointments as a sign of irrecoverable failure. I have embarked on that fitness journey again, but this time displaying more patience with myself and also using the strength and resilience built from the struggles or “failures” of 2024. Now, I’m in a much better place and am making good consistent progress in this area of my life. In reality, there will always be periods where you fall short slightly but what’s more important is how you get up and how you use those periods to become better and stronger.     

Failure in Romance and Dating

Another area where my old mentality towards failure and regret has badly affected me, is in dating and romance. In this area of my life, I’d judge myself harshly based on whether I was able to attract a partner or not. Typically I have not had that much success in this area of my life, based on those parameters. Because of these perceived failures and difficulties, I started to develop the self belief of just not being good enough. Every time I met somebody and liked them romatically but the feelings were not reciprocated or every time I went on a date only for the other person to decide that they didn’t want to continue the interaction, it chipped away at my confidence and solidified the notion that I somehow wasn’t good enough. In my mind, being single constituted a failure. Or, every time I met a new person I liked but it did not work out, it constituted a failure on my part. I started to ask myself, “what am I not doing right?”.  

Then, this developed into a mindset of “I’m not good enough and I’m never going to find anybody who will like me”. I would start to view this area of my life as an irrecoverable failure as well. Then, after some time, I started to have regrets. I started to wish I hadn’t spent so much time and energy being so negative towards myself. Now, my mentality is to appreciate myself much more whilst continuing to work on different aspects of myself. To not degrade my self worth or to subsequently get mad at myself for doing so. These were  necessary experiences or “failures” in my life that have led to me learning how to love and appreciate myself so much more rather than placing so much importance and value on external outcomes. Sometimes we have to trust our own process. We have to not always view our progress and development in such linear ways. 

Viewing ourselves Holistically

Linear ways of judging ourselves can take nuance and perception out of the equation. We all have foolproof metrics and objectives to help us measure where we are, but sometimes when it comes to our personal development we have to consider different aspects of life because we are complex beings. These areas of fitness and romance are important to a lot of us. But in my mind it was a case of, if im not getting all of these areas right so I must be absolutely failing in life. This is hardly a fair way to judge ourselves. Firstly, because we are all constantly works in progress and during different periods of life we may struggle more with certain things than others. But even more importantly, in my view, because we overlook the so-called smaller things in life. Or at the very least, other important aspects of life. What are you like as a human being? How much time do you invest in your hobbies? What kind of friend are you? What interests do you have and what is your personality like? Do you make an effort, or even commitment, to treating others with kindness and respect? And what about other aspects of your identity? Your passions and the impact you want to make in the world every day? Your attitude and application? How much time do you make for yourself to just be in your own company? Beliefs and faith? 

The picture I’m attempting to paint here is complex and multi-layered. All of these areas I’ve rhetorically questioned about, are as important to who we are as human beings and to our success in my opinion. And through building, working, and focusing on these virtues each and every day, I put myself in a better position to achieve what I then want to in the areas of fitness, career, romantic life etc. 

We can’t be good at everything, but we shouldn’t limit our self conceptualisations and judgements to a few areas of life. Especially, when these areas take time to develop and improve in. We will to some extent always be failing and then improving in these areas. Or at the very least, pondering furiously on how we can further our progress, development, and ultimately outcomes in these areas. We cannot view life through an all or nothing way or else when the inevitable peaks and troughs arrive, we are sucked into a trap of constantly experiencing really high highs and then brought crashing back down to the ground by really low lows. We naturally will all be affected by the highs and lows of life, but don’t allow your mind and mental health to become a vicious back and forth yoyo between both states. 

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