catastrophic failure: how do you rise from it?

[alfie]

to those who have experience catastrophic failure that led to total devastation of one's life, how did you rise from it, if only for a time. i understand many people here are utterly devastated and that's what led them here but maybe there are some people here who have managed to rise from failure, if only temporarily. thank you so very much in advance

 

[puppy9]

Many of those zzzzzzz.

 

[GinaIsReady]

Reframing my view on that event. Deciding to look at it as a set-back rather than catastrophic failure.

 

[Final Escape]

One day at a time. Gratitude list regularly, prayer, lol! I don't follow this advice all the time but it does work when I do this stuff. Time helps u process it somewhat. Acceptance. You may never get over it but u learn to live with what is.

 

[Susannah]

I've made lots of mistakes, and when I was a teenager, I lost 2 family members. I had a huge breakdown when I was 35y, and I had to built myself up again. It was a very lonely process, even with some help from therapists. I tried everything, meditation and training, but also meds (didn't help). I stopped watching the News at tv. I only listened to happy music. I looked in the mirror and gave myself credit. I used mantraes, like, "I'm a really good person. I decide who I an and what I want to do. I "broke up" with negative friends, and the few left, I helped and they helped me. I used earplugs a lot, to keep all "noise" away. I went for long walks, in the nature. And last, but most important, I started boxing!! Boxing is the best therapy I ever do. Find a thing you like to do. Maybe something you always have wanted to try. Do it, and give yourself huge compliments when achieving something!

Good luck

 

[FallenX]

Push forwards and never give up

 

[Misanthrope]

I think it helps to reframe failure and analyse it with the understanding no person is an island unto themselves. You cannot control every variable and all our actions do not exist solely in a vacuum. If self will alone achieve whatever we wanted we would all be billionaires by now and failure as a concept would not exist.

There is also no value in mauling yourself deeply and layering on hurt that would then solely be coming from yourself. It is pointless and likely to make you even more miserable and more liable to fail in future. Because being tired and miserable makes us crap at doing things. We all fall short of our goals at points. I managed to torpedo my own business at one point. I did learn from that failure though. That failure taught me where I was a naive utopianist moron.

So even failure and setbacks can have value in what they mirror back to you. But only if you can differentiate the causes of what was under your control and what hampered the control that you would have wanted. I was both to blame, confidence run amok and idiotic assumptions. But external forces were also to blame. No room for an upstart in this town. So I also got cut off at the knees in extremely petty but effective ways.

If you are the sort of person that measures the success of others. You have fallen into an easy trap. Because the people who do make it to that success, usually have a string of devastating failures behind them. But you don't see that, just the end result of where they are now. Probably because they did pick themselves up from that failure, learned from it and were willing to risk failing again.

Might be an idea to look up Survivorship Bias. It is pretty illuminating.

My good friend would say, "Better to fail forward than stagnate." Maybe recently you just failed forward so you still gained ground even if it may not feel like it. Now it is a case of what you are going to do with this devastating failure? Learn from it and rebuild with better insight? Or self flagellate yourself with it and remain stagnant till the pain of stagnation pushes you to try again or destroys you?