Failure intolerance: why it appears and how to combat it

We live in a society that pressures us to give the best of ourselves. However, it does not do so by encouraging us to improve in those aspects of life that seem significant to us, but rather by making us fear the idea of ​​failure.

failure intolerance It is the consequence of constantly educating us so that each of the steps we take in our lives gives an image of triumph. In this article we will see why this cultural phenomenon is reproduced generation after generation and what we must do to not let it affect us in a suffocating way.

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Failure intolerance: how does it start?

Surely you are familiar with those cases of fathers and mothers who do everything possible to make the lives of their sons or daughters fit into that image that we all have of social and personal success. However, this is something generalized, it does not happen only in these obvious examples. From our childhood, most family members impose, in a more or less clear and more or less intense way, life goals. They are routes that we are supposed to travel

to fit the idea of ​​success.

Of course, this type of marked objectives do not coincide exactly with what really interests us, and sooner or later early it becomes clear to us that it is not our fault if the activities proposed by the adults do not turn out satisfactory.

However, even after we have moved on to focus on our own interests, there remains something in our thinking that has to do with logic that our fathers and mothers and all of society in general transmitted to us: the improvement of the abilities that one possesses, and the fact from show these skills to others, is what speaks about who we are. What gives us value.

Thus, in our adolescence and youth, we identify ourselves with references that embody everything that one wants to become. These examples are inspiring, but as we will see, they also contribute to the fear of failure.

The emotional impact of referents

When someone becomes someone we admire, two things happen. On the one hand, you think about all the positive qualities of that person, but not in the negative ones, since the biased vision that is held about that referent makes the first ones eclipse the second ones, due to how impressive they are.

On the other hand, the fact that we identify with that inspiring person makes us gain power over the way we build our self-esteem. This means that when it comes to judging our achievements and the performance we show in various aspects of everyday life, these benchmarks serve as our horizon.

The people we admire are something we compare ourselves to on a regular basis. However, we do not have as much material with which to compare our failures. As a result, we treat failure as something abnormal, something that shouldn't be there, even though the hidden part of life of all those admired people is full of it.

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How to learn not to fear mistakes

In order to develop talent, it is necessary to fail countless times, and in fact during the learning process, failures are the norm. However, although we are theoretically aware of this, we often forget it; We act like it's not true. What we have to do is, then, come to our senses and forget about the old complexes and with extreme perfectionism, which will lead us to block ourselves and not try to start any initiative.

To enter into this new philosophy of life, it will be useful for you to follow these tips.

1. Rethink your interests

To begin with, it is necessary to be sure that what constitutes the activity from which we judge who we are and how far we can go is something that really motivates us. If this is not the case, it is normal that the effort put into it is not enough, and therefore the only thing left is the feeling that it has failed.

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2. Set attainable goals

If you set realistic, short-term goals for yourself, you'll be far less likely to obsess over small failures as you go along.

3. Record your progress

Document the progress of your projects, so that it is easier and simpler to take into account what you have been achieving. In this way you will be able to see that the mistakes you make are relative, since after all they are part of a general trend of improvement.

4. Create belief modification routines

It is necessary to make the excess of perfectionism disappear, and for this it is necessary to modify beliefs. Although this process is much simpler and more effective with the help of personalized psychological care through the service of professionals, you can try to do it on your own.

To do this, spend a couple of moments a week writing down your impressions about the relationship between your achievements and your failures. First write down how you perceive your failures, and then compare this to how you should perceive them in a different way. more reasonable, in which it is clear that mistakes are part of the learning process, and not obstacles.

Then reflect on those patterns of thought that in your day to day make you fall into intolerance to failure. In this way, you will know how to identify the moments in which those beliefs appear.