Failure can be hard to handle. A big swing and a miss — whether it’s in your personal or professional life — can distort your vision of yourself, torpedoing confidence and convincing you that you’re less valuable as a person.
These types of defeated feelings may also spiral into thoughts of worthlessness or self-blame, says Elise Kalokerinos, PhD, a social psychologist and senior lecturer in at the University of Melbourne in Australia, where she codirects the Functions of Emotions in Everyday Life (FEEL) lab. Research backs up this phenomenon, even suggesting that experiencing failure can increase your risk of mental health conditions.
Fortunately, it is possible to shift from feelings of overwhelming disappointment to those of empowerment with a little emotional regulation on your part. Here are 10 practical, psychologist-recommended tips to help navigate the fallout of failure and move toward your mindset toward your next success.
1. Acknowledge Your Feelings
For handling intense emotions of disappointment, Kalokerinos’s first suggestion is a deceptively simple strategy: acceptance. Go ahead and tell yourself it’s okay to feel bad in the beginning when something doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to. A little bit of wallowing is okay.
“It actually does make you feel better,” Kalokerinos says.
One study found that believing it’s okay to have negative emotions helps people cope more effectively, allowing them to change how they think about the situation as time moves on.
2. Be Kind to Yourself
Acceptance is part of a bigger concept you can draw on to cope with failure called self-compassion, where you treat yourself like you would a friend, Kalokerinos says. Research suggests that adopting a kinder attitude toward yourself may increase positive feelings and reduce rumination.
If you’re struggling to find ways to show yourself some love, try taking a half-hour break to recharge, maybe by taking a nap or connecting with a friend.
Meditation is also a powerful way to help you recognize and silence negative inner dialogue that’s making you feel stressed or worried. One eight-week study of 276 adults found that mindfulness-based stress reduction is about as effective as certain SSRIs for reducing anxiety symptoms.
3. Use Distraction to Reset
Distracting yourself from a job layoff or a breakup may be an effective way to temporarily shut down feelings of failure when your negative emotions feel too intense to handle, says Kalokerinos. She also notes that distraction isn’t the same as suppression, which involves trying to push down feelings forever.
Distraction, on the other hand, is about temporarily focusing on positive feelings, so when you return to the feeling of failure, it may be less intense and easier to process it.
Distraction doesn’t need to be a complicated task, either: One study found that doing simple, attention-demanding tasks, such as counting backward by threes, can decrease the unpleasant thoughts and feelings that can pop up when you think about stressful parts of your day.
To cope with failure, Kalokerinos suggests something enjoyable that pulls your attention away from negativity and rumination, like taking a walk, a nice meal, running, listening to a podcast, or even spending an afternoon watching a show you enjoy on a streaming channel. Skip unhealthy distractions, like drinking alcohol, which won’t help your cause in the long run.
4. Get Punny
Laughing might be the last thing you feel like doing in the aftermath of a big failure, but research suggests that humor — including jokes and puns — can be a powerful emotional regulation tool, even for people who are experiencing symptoms of depression.
“People often focus on wanting to feel less bad. But actually, sometimes it's easier to leave the bad aside and to try and feel happy instead,” says Kalokerinos.
5. Tweak How You Talk to Yourself
When things aren’t going your way, it’s easy to get sucked into your own thoughts, says Jason Moser, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist, professor, and associate dean of research in the department of psychology at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Dr. Moser says a simple internal language shift can help: Talk to yourself as if you were someone else, using “you” or your name. Called distanced self-talk, this dialogue strategy creates helpful emotional distance from a difficult situation.
Whether you’re dealing with a minor setback or a deeply painful failure, this approach can ease negative feelings. The research, including a paper by Moser and his colleagues, suggests that distanced self-talk works regardless of how intense the experience you’re navigating feels.
6. Connect to Your Values
Moser says even when things don’t work out the way you’d hoped, you should still stay true to your personal values about growth, exploring new opportunities, and challenging yourself. By connecting with your core values, you may find help accepting failure, he adds.
Science backs up this theory too: One review of research suggests that reminding yourself of what you value helps buffer stress and boost positive emotions, since it may helps you connect with something larger than yourself.
If you aren’t sure what your core values may be, take time for self-reflection. Journaling about experiences that make you feel proud of yourself can help you identify the guiding principles that will help you overcome setbacks and push you toward a more successful personal or professional life.
7. Treat Failures as Feedback
The most resilient among us may have learned to bounce back from setbacks by learning from their failures instead of feeling shame over them. Errors and setbacks don’t define who you are; they’re information that helps you improve over time.
“Mistakes are a fundamental aspect of learning. Period,” says Moser.
This way of thinking — called a growth mindset — can help reduce stress and help you cope with failure and other mental health issues, according to a review of the research. One meta-analysis of 72 independent samples found that having a growth mindset is correlated with lower psychological distress and a greater likelihood of adopting more effective coping strategies.
8. Make an Action Plan for Next Time
Once you’ve started to absorb the loss and learned a little from your mistakes, consider creating an action plan to help you resolve future failures, since there will almost certainly be more of them down the road. Moser recommends taking time to think through how you might approach a similar disappointment in the future.
“You want to pull in information about how that mistake occurred, how you can do something differently the next time, and what will produce a match between what you intended to do and what actually happened,” he says.
By doing so, you may find you contributed to the situation in some ways — it does take two to tango, after all — while other factors may have been beyond your control.
9. Search for Unexpected Positives
Remember that old saying about turning lemons into lemonade? In the face of a sour situation, ask yourself this: What meaningful thing happened as a result of this failure? What do I now have that I wouldn't have had otherwise? Maybe by not landing that dream job, for example, you’ll have an opportunity to spend more time with family, suggests Kalokerinos.
Finding a silver lining in a disappointing outcome can help snap you out of a funk and change the channel in your head. One study found that looking for the bright side of a situation provides a systematic change in perspective that allows you to recognize that new opportunities will lie ahead.
10. Reach Out for Help and Support
If you’ve given these tips a try and still not getting past your feelings of failure, Kalokerinos recommends asking friends, family, or a mentor for assistance in reframing the event. However, just any old sounding board won’t do.
“The difficulty with using other people is that you need to turn to other people who are empathetic and compassionate and good at these kinds of things,” Kalokerinos says. Seeking support from someone who tends to invalidate you can do more harm than good.
Can’t think of the right person to lean on? Try a therapist. “They’ve been trained in how to support you through your emotions,” she says.
The Takeaway
Because failure can impact emotions and self-worth, emotional regulation can help people shift from overwhelm to empowerment. Start with strategies that ease intense emotions, like acceptance, self-compassion, distraction, humor, and distanced self-talk.
Once your feelings are more manageable, try thinking about the failure differently by connecting with your core values, treating it as a learning opportunity, making action plans, or searching for unexpected positives.
If you’re struggling to cope on your own, reach out to empathetic friends, family, or a therapist who can help you work through your emotions.
EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
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Hoge EA et al. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction vs Escitalopram for the treatment of Adults With Anxiety Disorders. JAMA Psychiatry. November 9, 2022.
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Chelsea Vinas is a licensed psychotherapist who has a decade of experience working with individuals, families, and couples living with anxiety, depression, trauma, and those experiencing life transitions.
She is a first-gen Latina currently working for Lyra Health, where she can help employees and their families stay emotionally healthy at work and at home.
Chelsea has varied experience in mental health, including working in national and international prisons, with children who have autism, and running her own private practice.
Emily P.G. Erickson is a freelance writer specializing in mental health and parenting. In addition to Everyday Health, she has written for other top websites and publications, including The New York Times, the American Psychological Association, Wired, Health, Parents, Verywell Mind, Verywell Family, Romper, and more. She is a professional member of the National Association of Science Writers, the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Erickson holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and geography and a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Her graduate training included a psychotherapy practicum at a community mental health clinic where she provided mental health therapy to children, adolescents, and adults to treat anxiety, depression, trauma, and other common concerns.
Erickson previously researched treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. She coauthored papers sharing the results of these studies, which were published in the peer-reviewed psychology journals the Journal of Traumatic Stress; Psychological Services; and Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, contributing to the advancement of PTSD patient care.
She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with her husband and three sons. To recharge, she loves to create nourishing plant-based meals for her family and walk and run along the Mississippi River with friends.
