Thomas Edison failed twenty thousand times before finding the material suitable for lightbulb filament. When asked about his failures, he said “I didn’t fail. I found twenty thousand ways not to make a lightbulb’.

When you push yourself beyond  your comfort zone, occasionally you will stumble and fall. The more you try to do, the more  you will fail. But because  you try to do more, you ultimately accomplish more.

You have already failed if you are trying to hold on to past success. You can’t stay still. You are either moving ahead or failing behind.  As far as I am concerned, people who think they fear failure have got it wrong. They really fear success. If you truly feared failure, you’d be very successful.  People who truly fear anything stay as far away from it as possible.

When bad things happen to good people (like you), it is a natural reaction to ask, ‘Why me”. Go ahead and do that. But ask the question with a purpose. Why did this happen to you? What can you learn from it so it won’t happen again? How can you be better, stronger, faster?  Find some meaning in it. You know how people always say “all things happen for a reason”. Figure out what the reason is, and see the silver lining.

Don’t take failure personally. You did not fail, you failed at something. You are not a failure. Don’t blow these things out of proportion. Learn from it, laugh at it, and then leave it behind you. Look for opportunities, see solutions, be as positive as you possible can, and you will rise from the rubble.

If it  helps, maybe you could describe a difficult time as a temporary setback rather than as a permanent failure.  You will bounce back.

Finally, rather than dwelling on the disaster, do something that can bring some order to  your life and help you get your bearings. After a failure, you may feel out of control. Do something small that you can count as a victory.