If you fail, you often doubt yourself. Not smart or talented enough – so is usually your own assessment.
However, according to US studies, a quite different factor has far greater impact on reaching goals than intelligence or talent. What counts most is perseverance. Whether in the job, in learning a musical instrument, in school, in sports – in all areas of life, those that show perseverance will have real advantages. The explanation for this is obvious: If you don’t give up and do it again and again, you will ultimately succeed. The whole thing sounds very simple, but it is of great importance when it comes to the choice of goals, as well as their realization. As mentioned above, we often look for the reasons for our failure in areas that we have no influence on. We attribute it to lack of talent, unfavorable heredity, or (very popular) external circumstances. This way of thinking puts us in a passive role. Therefore, knowing the importance of perseverance is so important! It allows us to see ourselves as active actors of our lives. Even if fate puts us stones in the way of our dreams, we must not necessarily bury them!
After each setback always getting up again… this can be exhausting. And yes, sometimes it is also damn painful! What makes it possible to try again?
“The problem is dealing with failure!”, says the social psychologist Professor Heiner Keupp. “We put our mistakes right with failure… and therefore we have a lot of anxiety about doing so.” If we fail, we are full of self-doubt, rage or shame – the list of negative emotions is long. The cause is mainly our fear of the reactions of our environment. We fear to be condemned, ridiculed, or pitied. Who wants to be portrayed as a loser?
A rethinking of dealing with setbacks can help.
“Every defeat is accompanied by an increase in knowledge.”
It is precisely through a supposed failure that we gain new abilities and valuable experiences, which in turn enable us to fulfill our goals.
As the American writer Anthony Robbins so beautifully says:
“Good decisions are usually the result of experience. Experience is usually the result of bad decisions. “
Great post and really motivational 👍