How To Recover After Failure? A Social Psychology Podcast Episode.

Even though failure is part of life, it can still hurt. For example, you can fail to pass an exam, you can fail a driving test and you might fail to get a date for a party. Everyone fails at things in life. Yet depending on your mindset towards failure, failure can decrease your self-esteem, increase your critical thoughts and it can even make you feel a little depressed. Therefore, by the end of this social psychology podcast episode, you'll learn why failure can hurt, how to recover after failure and more. If you're interested in social psychology, psychology of failure and more then this is a great episode for you. 

Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Why Can Failure Lead To Anxiety?

As I mentioned in the introduction, whenever we experience failure, we can feel disheartened, anxious and we can even feel a little depressed as much as failure is part of life. For example, when I failed my driving test for the first three times, I got really anxious that I was never going to pass, that I would always be a failure and that I was useless. Another example is during my psychology undergraduate degree because I couldn’t seem to understand academic writing and I couldn’t achieve the 2:1 that I needed to be able to get onto a Master's, I felt useless, pathetic and I was anxious about my future. A final example is when I was struggling to find a job after graduation, I was anxious that I wasn’t going to be able to become a psychologist, I felt pathetic and I was so depressed.

Failing to find a job is so soul-crushing and depressing and just awful.

Nonetheless, in the end, I did past my driving test and I love driving. I did achieve my 2:1 and I’ve now completed my MSc in Clinical Psychology and I’m employed as a teaching assistant at a special education needs school.

In addition, as an aspiring or qualified psychologist, you will fail at some point in your career. You will probably fail to get onto the doctorate of clinical psychology the first time, you will probably fail in getting the first assistant psychologist role you apply for, and you will probably fail an interview or two (or more) in your career.

Failure is part of the human experience. Especially in a career as competitive and difficult as clinical psychology.

As you can see, failure happens to everyone, and ultimately what determines our journey towards success is how we handle failure. That’s why in the rest of this psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn a wide range of strategies to help you overcome anxiety and recover after failure.

How Can Practising Self-Compassion Help You Recover After Failure?

Treating yourself with understanding and kindness after failure can help you recover and bounce back quicker, because this decreases your self-criticism and negative self-talk. These negative thoughts only prolong your feelings of anxiety, hurt and failure. This is why it’s important to extend the same support and empathy that you would towards a best friend or loved one, because it will help you to feel better so you can keep trying.

This applies to aspiring and qualified psychologists because whether you’ve failed a job interview, failed to get onto the doctorate or you’ve failed to get a specific grade on an assignment. It’s important that you’re kind to yourself and understanding. This is what I should have done during my undergraduate degree. Instead of seeing myself as a useless, pathetic idiot who was too dumb to do a Master's, I should have been kind and understanding. This would have decreased my pain, my hurt and anxiety so I could bounce back and focus on doing better next time.

How Does Recognising and Accepting Your Emotions Help You Recover After Failure?

When you recognise and understand that disappointment, anxiety and frustration are normal after failure, then you can give yourself permission to experience them. This is much healthier than suppressing your feelings because this can stop you from moving forward.

This is why I always allow myself to experience all my emotions that I’m experiencing, and sometimes I will just allow myself to lie on my bed for five or ten minutes and feel everything that I’m feeling. This gives me permission and the space to process my emotions so I can move forward and basically crack on with my life.

In addition, this week at the time of writing, I came home from work and I swore constantly. I allowed myself to feel all my rage, anger and frustration at a particular situation because of how a given factor was screwing over me and a child who I work with. By swearing and getting out all of my anger, I felt a lot better and I could move on with my life instead of ruminating and feeling awful for longer.

This is something I get the students to do at the special needs school that I work at. I give them permission, I encourage them and I validate them to experience all their emotions. Since in my experience as a teaching assistant, the emotions themselves are flat out never the problem, it is what students do with the emotions that matter. For example, instead of chasing an annoying girl and wanting to hit her, it’s best to feel the emotion and ignore the annoying person instead of wanting to harm them.

Moreover, as aspiring or qualified psychologists, this can help us recover after failure because whenever you don’t get a job, you fail at a job interview and you fail to get onto the doctoral course of your dreams. You are going to feel bad, frustrated and anxious about the future. You need to be compassionate and allow yourself to feel these emotions, do not suppress them and accept these emotions are understandable, valid and a normal part of the process.

This allows you to get back up, fight again and move forward after failure.

How Does Embracing Failure as a Chance For Growth Help You Recover After Failure?

I always see failure as a chance to grow as a professional, as a person and as a friend so I can be better for next time. Therefore, seeing failure as a chance for growth is a healthy mindset shift because it allows you to see that failure is a stepping stone towards success. As well as our brains contain a lot of neurocircuitry that are dedicated to increasing our dopamine levels after failure, so we feel motivated and we want to try again.

As a result, if we embrace failure as a stepping stone towards success and personal growth, then we become more positive and less anxious after failure. This mindset shift allows us to become more positive and recover quicker after failure.

Personally, when I went through the awful process of trying to get a job after my graduation, I flat out hated all the failed job applications, all the rejections and all the failed interviews. I went through so much failure, I was depressed and I was so drained by the entire process. Yet I always saw each failure as a stepping stone and something to reflect and learn from.

Which is what we will talk about now.

How Does Reflecting and Learning Help You Recover From Failure?

Taking the time to reflect and learn from your failures can be a powerful step towards recovery after failure because if you analyse what went wrong, identify factors within your control then you can make adjustments for the future. For example, I always fail at interviews whenever I am asked something along the lines of “tell me about yourself”. I hate that interview question with an utter passion, but I understand that my interview preparation is very much in my control, so I need to practise this and learn from this failure. That is why I’m going to do a podcast episode on how to answer this interview question in the future.

This will give me a chance to reflect on my experience and failure, learn how to be better and this will increase my likelihood of not making this failure again. This makes me feel hopeful, excited and more relaxed about future attempts too.

As a result, as aspiring and qualified psychologists, I would highly suggest that you take a few moments to think of your past failures and reflect on them. What could you change so the failures don’t repeat themselves? How could you learn from them? What skills can you learn and develop to prevent the failures repeating themselves?

And dear listener, giving up is not an option. Keep trying, keep learning and keep moving forward.

How Can Seeking Support Help You Recover After Failure?

After you’ve experienced a failure, it can be lovely, affirming and just heartwarming to reach out to supportive friends, loved ones and others who can support you. Sometimes you just need to rant at understanding others who know what it’s like and sometimes you don’t want advice, you just need to rant.

Sometimes after a hard day at work at the SEN school, myself, the other teaching assistants and the teacher just rant, let it all out and we talk about our frustrations. It helps us to feel better, feel supported and understand that we aren’t alone in our feelings after a “failure” or a tough day. Come to think of it, it was only this week at the time of writing that I had a deep conversation with a new work peer about how we were both being screwed over because of a given situation. It was lovely to talk to her, understand we both weren’t happy and it was lovely and validating.

It brought us closer too.

Sometimes after a tough day, a failure or whenever you’re feeling bad, having someone to support you and talk to is exactly what you need.

As aspiring and qualified psychologists, if your working environment is a safe space then talk to your peers, your friends and let them know your frustrations and how you’re feeling. Never bottle it up and you’re probably find that they have had similar feelings to you and it just takes one person to open up to put the rest of the team at ease.  As well as I understand lots of assistant psychologists form supportive groups so you can all talk about, support each other and vent your frustrations about the challenges of getting onto the doctorates or taking the next step in your psychology journey.

In addition, when it comes to failure, you might want to work with a reputable coach who can help you to achieve your goals. A lot of them offer a free consultation and you should check if they have a track record of success, and this can be really good for some people. For example, my ex-boyfriend went to a work coach and he always said that it was really helpful, useful and insightful. I remember how he always hated mock interviews and watching himself (because they were recorded) were just hell on earth for him, but they were useful.

As aspiring and qualified psychologists, there are a lot of great ways how you can seek support. I am aware of a few mentorship programmes, memberships and other coaching provided by psychology professionals to help you progress in your career. I know the wonderful Dr Marianne Trent does her psychology membership and that is meant to be brilliant, so there are options for you to seek support, learn and develop so you can recover after failure.

How Can Learning From Successful People Help You Recover After Failure?

Learning from successful people can help you recover after failure because you can study their paths to success, get insights from their resilience and apply their strategies to your own life. You can do this by reading their books, following them on social media and listen to them on podcasts. This helps you recover after failure because you can see that your goal is achievable, you can get inspiration from them and you can learn from their mistakes so you don’t make them yourself.

I would add here that it’s important to acknowledge that you need to follow your own path, because you are your own person, you have your own background and life circumstances. This is something I do a lot in my author life because I flat out love USA Today Bestsellers Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I have learnt so much from them over the years, I have a working relationship with them and they are amazing people. Yet I understand I cannot copy everything they do because we live in different countries, we have different careers and our social worlds are very different.

This is why it’s important to pick and choose what you learn from them.

If I apply this to psychology for a moment, you all know that I am a massive fan of Dr Marianne Trent, but we are different people so I cannot copy everything from her to get her career. For example, I’m a fiction author, she’s prepared to move across the country to chase her psychology dreams and she was willing to commute for two hours a day for a psychology job. I am not. Therefore, as much as I want her career in the end, I have to take a different route and focus on what makes me happy.

Just something I think about.

How Can Setting Realistic Goals Help You Recover After Failure?

When you break your goals down into smaller, more manageable chunks that align with what you’re capable of as well as your resources. This helps you to recover after failure because it makes everything seem a lot less daunting, overwhelming and anxiety-inducing. Also, this helps you to set realistic goals for yourself so you can avoid any unneeded pressure and anxiety about reaching unattainable levels of success that are outside of your current abilities and resources at this moment in time.

Furthermore, it’s important that you celebrate your progress along the way, even if it’s a bit of progress that you perceive as small. It is still a good step in the right direction towards your goal.

A personal example of this is I understand that I am not going to become a clinical or educational psychologist anytime soon. Yet I can continue to work in education, develop my clinical experience and learn more about clinical and educational psychology so I can progress in my psychology journey. This attitude of wanting to slow down, focus on small steps and learning over time helps to give me confidence, it takes the pressure off and I am a lot less anxious about meeting my goal.

On the whole, sometimes a massive reason for your failure in the first place is because your goal was too big and unattainable at this moment in time.

How Can Embracing A New Approach Help You Recover After Failure?

You all understand that we cannot keep doing the exact same thing and expecting different results. Therefore, after a failure, whether it is a job application, a job interview or you trying to show your psychological knowledge on a doctoral application, you might need a new approach to get the result that you want. Instead of you falling into the same trap that gets you to use the same thought processes and hoping beyond hope that you will magically get a different result. This is why it’s important to adopt a radically new approach after failure because this helps you to unlock new opportunities and hopefully avoid the same failures and mistakes again.

To do this, you can challenge yourself to embrace the exact opposite way of thinking, take risks and ask yourself “why not?”. This helps you to flip the mental script, consider other points of view and it opens you up to new ideas and solutions to your difficulties. Also, you can do this by challenging your beliefs, your opinions and explore different angles.

For instance, I used to be dead set on the idea that I need to become a clinical psychologist because that was the only thing I wanted in my psychology career. Yet as I opened my mind up towards exploring educational psychology, I have to admit that this might be a better fit for me given my skills, my years of experience and what I’ve achieved in these areas. This has helped me to feel less like a failure in my psychology journey. That is just one example.

Another example is I used to avoid researching the “tell me about yourself” interview question because I didn’t think it was important, it was a waste of my time and it was pointless. Yet as I found out, it was silly of me to go into psychology job interviews, give my same bad answers and expect different results. That is why I’m taking the new approach where I focus on how to answer these questions really well.

To apply this point more generally, aspiring and qualified psychologists can use this knowledge because as reflective practitioners, we always need to be thinking, reflecting and opening ourselves up to new ways of doing things. Therefore, I highly encourage you to think about your failures, be it a job interview, a job application or maybe even a clinical situation, and question whether you need a new approach to avoid the same mistake happening ever again.

On the whole, as you can see, when it comes to recovering after failure, it’s important that you have the ability, or at least cultivate it, so you can challenge the status quo, you’re open to new ideas and you explore new areas. This is the only way how you’re going to be able to unlock new perspectives, find opportunities and forge a path towards your goal and definition of success.

How Can Staying Motivated and Persistent Help You Recover After Failure?

By continuing to be persistent and motivated after failure, it can help you recover because it reminds you that failure isn’t a permanent state. It is just a single moment in time. Yes, it might be a painful moment in time and failure can hurt you, make you feel anxious and make you feel bad. Yet by staying motivated and focusing on your strengths and past achievements, this will help you to cultivate a positive mindset. In turn, this allows you to bounce back and recover quicker after failure. As well as this allows you to use the power of dopamine to propel yourself forward so you can continue your journey towards success.

I apply this to my everyday life because I understand at a deep level now over the past few months that becoming a psychologist really is such a long journey for normal people. Unless you are gifted enough with the right living situation, good mental health and a lot of money so you can do the years of unpaid work experience that is required of you, then becoming a psychologist will take years. And that’s okay.

That fact and simple realisation no longer makes me feel like a failure, useless and pathetic. Instead it frees up my mental energy so I can focus on learning, being positive and doing things that I enjoy instead of ruminating over the unfairness of clinical psychology. Since rumination doesn’t get me towards my goals.

Learning, being happy and moving forward, that is what moves me closer towards my psychology goals.

As a result, as an aspiring or qualified psychologist, you need to focus on feeling your emotions, accepting them and finding a way to stay motivated and persistent. Essentially, never stop working towards your psychology goals, but look after yourself too.

Why Can Practising Self-Care Help You Recover After Failure?

A final way to help you recover after failure is to practice self-care because you need to take care of your mental and physical health by engaging in self-care activities. These are activities that promote relaxation, like mindfulness, exercise and hobbies that make you happy. As well as maintaining a healthy and balanced diet, getting enough, consistent sleep and avoiding self-sabotaging behaviour are all important as well.

If we focus on self-sabotaging behaviours for a moment. It isn’t uncommon for someone to start sabotaging themselves after a failure as a form of self-punishment for the failure. For example, excessive drinking, overeating and self-sabotage. These behaviours are driven by negative emotions as well as a lack of self-compassion and all the other strategies that we’ve learnt in this episode. Therefore, it’s important to recognise these maladaptive and destructive patterns of behaviour and replace them with useful behaviours that are going to get you closer towards your goals.

Personally, when I kept failing to find a psychology job after my graduation, I made sure that I engaged in self-care activities to protect my mental health. Like, reading, writing, watching good programmes that I enjoyed, hanging out with friends amongst others. You need to do what makes you happy. As well as even now as a teaching assistant, my time is a lot more limited but I still make sure to practise self-care by listening to audiobooks, writing, running my business, learning about psychology and talking to peers and friends.

You need to find out what makes you happy and incorporate it as a non-negotiable in your life.

On the whole, engaging in self-care practices can support your physical and mental health and this helps you recover faster after failure.

Social Psychology Conclusion

At the end of this psychology podcast episode, I am really pleased that we’ve learnt about how to recover after failure, because failure isn’t nice. Failure makes us feel pain, anxious and even a little depressed even though failure is a part of life. Yet failure isn’t a problem and makes us feel bad, it is our response to failure that decreases our self-esteem and mental health. Therefore, by having a positive growth mindset and you see failure as a chance to reflect, grow and develop as a person, it can help you recover after failure so you can move on, work towards your goals and hopefully thrive.

Here's a little reminder of the ten strategies to recover after failure that we’ve spoken about today:

·       Practice self-compassion

·       See failure as a chance for growth

·       Reflect and learn after failure

·       Recognise, process and accept your emotions

·       Seek support after failure

·       Set realistic goals for yourself

·       Learn from successful people

·       Practice self-care

·       Stay motivated and persistent

·       Take a new approach

I hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

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Social Psychology References and Further Reading

Balaji, M. S., & Sarkar, A. (2013). Does successful recovery mitigate failure severity? A study of the behavioral outcomes in Indian context. International Journal of emerging markets, 8(1), 65-81.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/202307/10-strategies-to-conquer-anxiety-after-failure

Knepper, R. A., Tellex, S., Li, A., Roy, N., & Rus, D. (2015). Recovering from failure by asking for help. Autonomous Robots, 39(3), 347-362.

Nikolić, N., Jovanović, I., Nikolić, Đ., Mihajlović, I., & Schulte, P. (2019). Investigation of the factors influencing SME failure as a function of its prevention and fast recovery after failure. Entrepreneurship Research Journal, 9(3).

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