How to Deal With Failure

I found this great article on MyKidsTime.com and wanted to share it with you.

First, it’s important to remember that everybody fails – all of us! We all fail at different things at different times in our lives. The most successful scholars, sports stars, business people, and politicians will all have failed at some stage. By encouraging your child, you can use their perceived failures to help your child to grow and find their way to a happy and contented life.

These tips will help you to help your child, your teenager, or even yourself when dealing with failure.

#1. You Can Learn From Failure

Ask what have you learned? Understand what went wrong and come up with solutions to help move forward. In every failure there is the potential for learning.

#2. Look At the Positives

Encourage your child to find the positives that are in every situation by chatting about the experience together. Perhaps they didn’t win the match but scored a goal, or they didn’t get an A on the test but did score higher than the last time.

Whatever the situation, they may not have achieved the desired outcome, but there will have been smaller learnings or achievements along the way.

#3. It’s OK to Feel Sad

It’s ok to feel sad, but it’s also important to accept the defeat or loss and move on.

We have all heard the saying ‘don’t be a sore loser’ and it’s true – if you are playing sports, take your defeat, smile and congratulate the opposition. In fact, whether you win or lose, always shake hands afterwards – that is what the true greats in any sporting field do.

#4. Don’t Blame Others

Don’t blame others or make excuses for your failures. Take responsibility, own your mistakes and learn from them.

In a team environment, like sports, any win or loss is for the team. If your teammate misses a goal in the final minute, the loss is not his/her fault and there should be no blame given. Just as you would want to celebrate the win if they had scored, so you should accept the loss as a team.

#5. Everybody Fails At Some Point

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison, American inventor of the light bulb

It might not feel like it to your child at the moment, but everybody fails at something sometime. We share some examples of famous ‘fails’ below that your child might be interested to read.

#6. Failure is Usually Not Fatal

Mistakes were made, but life goes on.

#7. Real Winners Try Their Best

If your child can honestly say that they tried their best, then they are real winners –regardless of whether they win or lose.

Remind your child of this regularly, particularly in advance of high stress times like tests, sports events, etc. All any of us can ever do is our best – no one can ask for more.

#8. Believe in Yourself

Who you are is much greater that this one failure. No matter how big it may seem right now, you can and will go on to bigger and better things.

#9. “It’s Not Whether You Win or Lose…It’s how you played the game.”

How you conduct yourself is much more important than the result.

#10. Ask For Advice

Remember, failure gives you a chance to either try again or try something new. Just because it didn’t work this time doesn’t mean you should give up.

Remind your child they can ask you, their teacher, coach or someone more experienced for advice, and then listen to improve.

#11. Continue to Challenge Yourself

Success is different for everyone, so have your own goals and targets in mind. Often, you need to put yourself out of your comfort zone to reach your full potential. See yourself as a risk taker rather than a failure.

#12. Never Stop Trying

Failure can make you a stronger, better person so long as you learn from it and put the learning into practice.

The most important thing to remember, and to remind your child, is that it is far better to fail trying than to fail to try.