When All Else Fails

On the path to success come many adversities. You will fail. A lot.

Failure is caused primarily due to one of two reasons.

The first is when you don’t prepare at all.

The second is when you give it your all and still fail. It is very important to identify which reason caused your fall. Easier said than done.

The former is easier to identify and deal with. You half-heartedly do something and get half-hearted results. You become sad for a day or two, blame someone or something, decide to change yourself and get things done, actually get things done for a day or two, return to your old self, fail again, rinse and repeat. With each defeat, you make a commitment to improving yourself. You never improve.

The second one is trickier. You spill your blood, sweat, and tears into something, only to fail so badly that you question your whole preparation. Where did it go wrong? Sadly, the answer can only be found by you. When you actually work hard, you can look in the mirror and tell yourself truly that you did. If you didn’t, there will be one tiny voice saying, very slowly, that all you really did was binge-watch Vampire Diaries with breaks in between for productive work. Should have been the other way around. But once in a blue moon, the voice will say that you did everything you could. That’s when you know you gave your best.

And sometimes, the results don’t matter. It’s not always about the destination. It’s about the journey, yes, I know that sounds like something printed on a wall in a coaching center, but occasionally the wall is right. Five years later, when you look back, you may realize that it worked out just fine.

Still, recovering from the second kind of failure is trickier. Demotivation will be the biggest obstacle to climb.

Any normal person would give up at this point. I mean, it’s not like you failed deliberately, right? You did everything you could. But then normal people are the ones who later get into fights on Black Friday, so maybe normal is overrated.

Taking small steps when you are feeling hopeless is the only solution. Do something so small that it barely feels like you did anything, and then keep increasing the load. Believe me, it all adds up. One of the best examples of this is the two-month challenge. There is research that says it takes about 66 days for a routine to become a habit. Sixty-six days of doing something every day before it starts running through your veins.

There is a little caveat though. The initial days are the hardest. Suppose you decide to learn a new language for that solo Europe trip you plan to go on. You get the necessary resources, learn the new alphabet, feel proud for about eight minutes, and then move on to an entirely new project. It’s too hot in Europe anyway. The brain is one cheeky little dude. It will make excuses so convincing that you will feel justified quitting halfway. Learn when to use your brain and when to politely tell it to shut up.

Sixty-six days.

That’s all it takes.