Understanding Failure

 

 

When I was born, my grandfather named me S’danisile, a name which when directly translated means Disappointed. Before you think otherwise, my grandfather has absolutely no hate for me or my mother. In fact, it is blatantly obvious I am his favourite grandchild! Although the reasoning behind the name is understandable, my mother rejected the name which means it is not on any official documents, a reaction which is also understandable. Growing up, I knew I had this name as a few family members would only refer to me as S’danisile.

As a child, I never took it too seriously. However, the older I got the more I feared living up to this name. When it came to passing my GCSEs, making it through A levels, getting into university and finally graduating, I was always motivated and pushed by the ever growing fear of being a disappointment. Consequently, I never had a good relationship with failure. When I failed at anything, I immediately retracted into my own self-hatred. I would just try to forget about it, or to make sure that my next achievement was so big that everyone around me would also forget about the previous failure. Thinking back, even at a young age I subconsciously avoided any chances of family members seeing me fail.

Between the ages of 13-17 I was very active in Netball. In my family, boys played football and girls played netball so my love for netball was founded in the desire to follow in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps. I mainly played the centre position and occasionally wing attack for those who are familiar with the game. My fear of failure meant I only invited my mother to one game out of god-knows how many I played. As much as I longed for my mother to come to see me play, I feared her watching my team lose the game. She was one of the greatest netball players in her time and team so of course I wanted her approval. I remember one game in which I asked a friend to record me playing so that my mother could watch me. My mother never saw that video, even though I was awarded ‘player of the match’ - because in the last minute, my team lost by one point. 

My fear of failure greatly affected my goals and aspirations in life. I sometimes put myself in difficult positions and situations, so my hard work and success from that would prove that I was not a disappointment. Even if it meant that I would struggle and not enjoy myself, I would work just for the sake of working. It sounds ridiculous, I know. For example, for my GCSEs I aimed for 12 As/A* (this was back when the GCSE grading system made sense). So when I opened the envelope and saw that I had 1A, 7Bs and 4C, I was shattered. I remember crying all the way home, not answering my mother’s phone calls, avoiding all my friends because to me, at that moment I had failed and that meant I was officially S’danisile. It was much to my surprise, then, when my mother and the rest of my family celebrated what they would call success. Afterall, I had actually passed my GCSEs.

Following this, the first year of my A Levels I did quite frankly the worst subjects for me. I was never interested in science, so why was I doing A Level Physics? Inevitably, I failed my first year of A Levels. This moment really highlighted my terrible relationship with failure. I did not know how to deal with it. To make matters worse, a very close family member took the time to emphasise to me how much of a failure I was and how I had disappointed and tainted the family name.  I felt as if the best thing for me to do would be to officially add S’danisile as my first name in all my documents. 

Overcoming failure comes in different stages. I once read a Business Insider article that summarised these stages as shock and surprise, denial, anger and blame, depressions, acceptance and finally insight and change. I have found that this applies to most forms of failure, be they big or small. To me, failing my first year of A Levels was the biggest form of failure. Coupled with my already terrible relationship with failure, I spent a very long time in the first 4 stages.  I understood that this form of failure greatly altered my life and where I would end up. With bad AS Level grades, my tutors predicted I would get even worse grades, which meant I was rejected by 3 out of the 5 universities I applied for. The worst thing about this was that I actually passed A2 with the exact grades I would have needed to get into all of those universities. When you are encountering the first 4 stages of dealing with failure, it’s hard to accept any ‘advice’ offered. In my opinion, statements such as ‘work harder next time’ or ‘it will encourage you to do better’ are not always helpful. It's not that I didn’t work hard enough to pass my AS Level exams.

I realise now, what made it even harder for me to move forward was a disease I like to call ‘what will people say’. I’ve come to understand that the best way to deal with failure is to make it personal. Focusing on how I felt, what I wanted, how I wanted to come out of this, would have helped me recover from this set back a lot quicker. Instead of personally dealing with myself, I subconsciously focused on the damage control of other people’s perceptions of me. The feelings associated with failure should merely be temporary and so it is not wise to make any permanent decisions in that state. 

I spent so long being scared of failure, so much so I never created a good emotional foundation on how to deal with it. Failure is an inevitable part of life. How you deal with it will determine your success. There are so many articles that talk about failure insinuating that we should celebrate it, smile, pick yourself up quickly and move on. A common theme I have realised is that most articles avoid admitting that failure is painful. It's hard, disappointing and difficult.

In my experience, not recognising the emotional effects of failure sets you up to endure failure longer than needed. It is important to understand that yes, failure is hard, but the feelings surrounding this require an expiry date.

The moment you choose to move forward is when failure simply becomes experience.

Essentially failure is a significant phase in life. A phase should not be permanent. Most of the time the feelings we associate with failure are not proportional to the actual event that happened. Failing my AS Level was not the end of the world. Although it felt like it at the time, I still had an opportunity to deal with the emotions, realise where I went wrong then plan ahead.

Sometimes we subconsciously set ourselves to fail because we have done it so many times. Never let failure become second nature. Take it from a girl who was named Disappointment.

How is your relationship with failure? 

Edited by Eloise Brooks