When you strive to improve your career and ultimately achieve difficult goals you are going to have setbacks and failures.
Failure Hurts
Failing can hurt our ego. It’s far easier to quit and give up, but if you are resilient and choose to focus on your goals as a marathon rather than a sprint, then you will be well-equipped tools to overcome failure.
Remember, no one is coming to save your career and there are not any participation trophies. Further, if you want help then you must demonstrate that you are working to help yourself.
💡 Pro Tip: Check out Harvard Business Review 10 Must Reads on Career Resilience
When you experience a failure ask yourself:
- Are you going to take failures personally, blame someone else for your outcome, or are you going to take responsibility for the result?
- Did you do everything in your control to create a positive outcome?
- How can you improve and adapt next time you face this situation?
- Can you do something to make yourself better?
- Will you quit or will you use failure as fuel to motivate you to success?
- Do you see each failure as one more step towards success?
You already know the answers to these questions, so which strategies you can you use to help you face failure and use it to help you towards success?
You Must Own Your Outcome
Sure, someone may have made noise in the background during your interview, or there was a better candidate for the job, or you received a bad performance review, or you did not get a raise this year. Yet ultimately you are the person striving to advance your career and well-being.
No one outside of your inner circle cares as much as you do about your outcomes. It is incumbent that you are the author of your story and that starts with you being responsible for every failure.
Seek To Understand, Reflect, And Improve
In our core content we have provided an overview of how to approach the situation when You Didn’t Get the Offer.
The core concepts of seeking to understand why you didn’t get an offer, reflecting on your performance, and ultimately improving for next opportunity are the same useful tactics you can use in any situation.
The key takeaway is that you can use these setbacks or disappointments as a springboard for future success if, and only if, you are willing to sit down and be honest with yourself and then adapt.
Keep Fighting
Sure, you got knocked down. Pick yourself up, dust off the dirt, and get back in the game.
Take a moment to look back at your goals and ask yourself what you are working towards.
Your goals serve as your compass and act as a reminder of why you are willing to suffer setbacks and failure.
Final Thoughts
You will fail at some point in your career and especially when you are interviewing for a new job. Falling short is part of the journey.
Failure and setbacks, however, are not permanent if you’re able to muster resilience.
Intermittent failure will create a hardness that allows you to confront, and ultimately, tackle harder and harder challenges.
Failure is okay but never quit.
💡 Pro Tip: If you need more coaching or advice, please contact us at this link and one of our consultants will be in touch.
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