For a just man falls seven times and rises up again.

– Proverbs  24:16 (MEV)

I failed yesterday, I was meant to stay up all night to work on something crucial. It had been a long day, I was exhausted, I was hungry, I was crampy. But, I was determined to pull through anyways, this was too important and long overdue, and I had promised someone. So I sat in my chair, put on my headphones and turned on Deezer Flow, one of my ways of getting into the flow state. After about two hours, I started getting distracted, I couldn’t keep up, then one of my recipes for failure creeped into my mind: grab a midnight snack. I did it, and the rest is history, I work up at 7 am.

If you’re like me, you feel very bad when you fail, and that feeling can drive you to two things: either fail more, or get so mad you succeed. The thing about failure especially when you have only yourself to blame is that it’s difficult to get over. Usually when I have a crappy night or day, it goes on to ruin the next day. Some people let an event of failure affect their thought pattern and self-image and it ends up affecting them for years. This doesn’t have to be the way that goes though, no matter the magnitude of the failure. To succeed post-failure, you must first detach yourself from that event of failure and realize that it doesn’t define you. Then have empathy for yourself, understand why you failed and realize you’re only human. Then learn from it. In that order.

I shook it off, started my morning ritual two and a half hours late. but still got every habit checked anyways. Feeling bad after a personal failing? Realize now that the failure isn’t your enemy, the real enemy is that feeling of anger and frustration after the failing. It gets you into a negative place and makes you believe bad things about yourself. Forgive yourself, shrug it off, bounce back harder and stronger. Detach from the event. And go on to succeed.