How to Bounce Back From Past Failures

It is not good enough to know the benefits of starting over and banishing the past. You also have to know how to go about starting the new journey. Many people desire to let go of the past and focus on the present. However, many fail because they lack the skills and information to do it right. This chapter will empower you with the knowledge and skills you need to start this new journey.

Treat The Past As A Lesson

According to psychologists, intelligence is the ability to learn from experience to make better decisions in the future. Therefore, whoever does not learn from the mistakes of the past cannot be referred to as an intelligent person. You should be able to draw out lessons from your experience to improve your decision-making. For example, if you have been in an abusive relationship before, you should remember those factors that made you surrender yourself to a dictator.

If it was because you depended on him or her for sustenance, then you should not enter another relationship until you have a job. You need to empower yourself and be valuable by making your own money. In the same way, if it was because you had low self-esteem, you need to work on that before entering a new relationship. You should be learning from what has happened to you in the past to avoid making the same mistakes...

It’s not likely that you commit to something when you are not sure about what you stand to gain by doing it. Forgetting about the past to start over has numerous benefits. This chapter will explore some of them to give you the impetus to start making changes that will give you a new lease of life.

High Self-Esteem

Your self-esteem is a product of the way you see yourself. It will be low when you feel that you don’t deserve to be loved and treasured. Note that you cannot separate self-esteem from self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the level of confidence you have in your ability to succeed in a task before you attempt it. It is vital that you have high self-efficacy because it makes others trust you to handle their projects on their behalf.

You need to earn the trust of people before you can be given the opportunity to prove yourself. Meanwhile, the only way you can convince them that you can do the job is when you have confidence in your ability to get the job done. Even when you have the qualifications for a job, you’ll still be doubted when you sound unsure about your chance of success in the task...

You’ll be stuck in the past when you think it has a vital role to play in your chances of future success. However, it’s not true that you cannot thrive again because of your mistakes and past failures. The future promises a lot if only you are willing to let go of the past. This chapter examines why the past doesn’t define the future of an individual.

The Past is a Closed Chapter

Treat your life like a book. Your experiences are previous chapters. The present moment is the chapter you are reading. In most cases, you don’t go back to a chapter you have read. You only flip back to those pages when you have something you didn’t get correctly. In some cases, you also flip back to that chapter when you find a similar concept in the current chapter. The implication of this is that you should only remember your past when you need to draw lessons from it.

You will not make progress if you remain stuck in a chapter of a book and refuse to read on. In fact, you might find better explanations regarding a particular concept you find difficult to understand in the subsequent chapters. Life is like that. Sometimes, you will not understand why some things happened the way they did until you forge ahead. For example, you might find out why your former boss treated you wrongly later. It could have been because of a jealous colleague....

When you have refused to start over, you are endangering yourself in various ways. As earlier mentioned, it can make you lose sight of the opportunities around you. This chapter explores what you stand to lose when you’re stuck in the past.

Depression

According to the World Health Organization, depression is a leading psychological problem affecting millions of people around the world. Note that depression is different from the occasional mood swings we have because of an unpleasant event. Depression is more intense and persistent than that. When you are depressed, you will not want to talk to anyone. You will prefer to stay on your bed rather than go out to have social interactions. At that moment, everything in the world becomes colorless and tasteless to you.

Note that depression can become fatal in the long run. It can lead to suicidal ideation. In other words, depression can make you feel like taking your life. Meanwhile, you should never get to that point. There is nothing worth it in this world that should make you feel that taking your life is the best option. As long as you are still alive, you can still rewrite your story. No one is denying that you are hurt, but you cannot get stuck in the past. The price can be too costly. ..

In the words of Chuck Palahniuk, “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.” These words were spoken some years ago. However, they are still as potent and relevant as the first time they were spoken. If only many people realized this simple but extremely powerful truth, life would have been easier for them. We would have had more individuals that are less cranky and frustrated in the world.

Some people struggle to overcome their past demons. For instance, bad experience from their past relationships often hinder them from building robust and happy relationships in the future. They built a mental wall and find it difficult to trust another person or commit into another relationship. Letting past experiences interfere with our future is detrimental to our growth and mental wellbeing. This chapter will explore some vital things about the past you need to know.

Life is a Journey

This statement might sound like a cliché, but it’s not. You have to realize that life is a journey. In fact, it is an experience we are all having for the first and last time. In other words, no one has been to this world before that is now having another opportunity to live it all over again. Indeed, there are people who are experienced in this world. However, their experiences are all parts of their journey in life...

Adopt a Positive Outlook on Your Efforts and End Goals

As an entrepreneur, you’ll find yourself dealing with many hardships. Getting your own business off the ground is no small task, and it comes with challenges and other hurdles that will make you doubt yourself and the possibility of achieving your own end goals.

If you start to face these challenges with a negative attitude, then you’re going to increase your chances of failure. However, by adopting a more positive outlook on what you’re doing, you will increase your chances of success.

Even if you think you can still work efficiently with a negative attitude, you’re not going to be doing as well as you think you are. It has been shown time and time again that those who are more positive in their outlooks and demeanors are more likely to be successful in their endeavors.

This is due in part to something known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe that your work won’t pan out the way you want it to, then you probably won’t put in as much effort, which inevitably leads to things not panning out.

You fail - not because you were right in your assumptions, but rather because you believed those assumptions, which caused you to change the way you work. Having a negative attitude about your own job will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you have a startup company that you’re running, but you have serious doubts about it being successful and you don’t anticipate it lasting, then you’re certainly not going to give it your all.

Why would you give your all in something that you don’t believe in? By failing to give 100% of your effort, the startup ends up failing and you have proven yourself right. Instead, a positive outlook will motivate you through the toughest times, but you have to really believe in the positive outlook.

If you’re just phoning it in, when times get tough, you’re going to find yourself unable to move past the tougher obstacles that you’re faced with. When you truly believe that the project you’re working on or the business you’re starting will work out, then you won’t hesitate to put more effort into it.

You trust that it won’t be for nothing. Being positive will not only influence you to be better, but it may also influence others around you if you have people working for or with you, leading to an overall more productive situation.

Success Mindset for Achieving Your Goals in Life

The world is made up of three kinds of people. Those who are successful, those who are not yet successful and those who will never be successful. You can see this simply by looking at people who try and try and just never seem to make it even though it’s clear that they possess the knowledge they need.

So why are there people in this world who dream big and have hopes for a successful future, but it all comes to nothing? The answer is that their mindset held them back just like the mindset of the successful propelled them to greater heights and the achievements of their dreams. If you want to make it in anything, you must have a success mindset.

Why a Successful Mindset Makes Your Goals Achievable

Having a success mindset is an important tool because what you think is in control of what you’ll do. If you think you can’t, you won’t. If you think you’re a failure, you are. If you think dreams come true for other people and not for you, then you’re right.

You’re creating your own version of mental roadblocks that then lead to physical roadblocks because you develop the mindset of “Why bother to try when you’re only going to end up failing?”

You think this way because you haven’t yet realized the power of mindset. It can guide or affect everything you do in your personal or professional life. The reason that it has this power is because you are the fuel that feeds into the belief.

Then you will act according to your mindset. You’ll act like a failure or you’ll act like a winner. You’ll act defeated or you’ll act triumphant. You might not have the same education as the next person.

You might not have the same level of talent. You might not have a lot of money. You might not have the same outgoing personality. But that doesn’t mean that your chances of success are any lower, because your mindset will determine that, not your station in life.

If you don’t believe that, do a quick search on people who became millionaires or who build a successful business from nothing. Your circumstances aren’t the chains that hold you back.

Your mindset is. But it doesn’t have to be. Only you can give it that authority. Once you step up and take control of your mindset, your days feeling like and acting like a failure are over.

Developing a success mindset leads to a change in how you see yourself. You’ll stop having a negative attitude about who you are and what you’re capable of. You’ll stop the thought track in your mind that tells you that you can’t succeed, that you don’t have what it takes.

Stopping that track then boosts your self-esteem. Whatever negative thought or belief that you allow to grow within your mind will grow and flourish like weeds choking out even the tiniest speck of good that you might believe about yourself.

When you develop a success mindset, it allows you to overcome self-criticism. This enables how you view everything to change. It changes your perspective, your ideas, bolsters your goals and gives new and fresh meaning to what you want to achieve.

How do you know if you have a success mindset? You view any failures as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than as stopping points. Every success that you want is doable by having a success mindset.

When you have that, your perspective shifts. You see obstacles as challenges. You believe you can overcome whatever obstacle is thrown at you. When you view problems, you might not automatically know the answer to them, but you believe that you’ll get the answer.

The vision that you have for your life shifts when you have a success mindset. It creates a determination within you that propels you forward and allows you to succeed regardless of the effort it takes.

You don’t quit until your goals are accomplished. With a success mindset, you don’t see circumstances that hold you back. You see chances to grow. You develop a strong can do attitude that allows you try where previously you might have allowed circumstances to keep you stuck at the starting line.

You have to remember that a success mindset envisions triumph, which improves your ability to reach the goals that you set for yourself. Think of your mindset as a gate that either opens for opportunities or closes to them.

​

Change Hopeless Negativity to an Optimistic Success Mindset 

One of the reasons that people develop a sense of hopeless negativity is because they view their life goals, their relationships, their dreams and their needs in light of what should have been instead of what is.

They feel a sense of disappointment that things haven’t worked out the way that they want, so they begin to close ranks around possibilities. People with hopeless negativity fail to see life as it can be and only focus on the bad or what’s prevented them from succeeding.

People who think this way don’t see their situation as ever improving. Their belief is that everything is bad. They live day to day expecting the worst to happen. It usually does because mindset leads to behaviors or habits that create the existence they believe.

So they end up not trying and they settle for the kind of life they don’t want, failing to see that the one they do want is only a mindset change away. Changing your hopeless negativity to an optimistic success mindset isn’t difficult.

It just takes some practice. Learn to view every situation though a positive lens. You can do this by seeking the positive in the situation, in the person or in your thoughts. What happens when you do this is it shifts your mindset away from what’s not good and puts it on what is.

Take the time every single day to reflect on the good that you experienced. If you look for the positive, you will find it regardless of whatever is going on - regardless of what did or didn’t happen.

You have to stop dwelling on the immediate and keep your view settled on the outcome. Every positive journey will have negative parts to it. If you stay focused on the negative, you can miss the bigger picture.

Your mindset can get so clouded over by the negative that you completely miss the good things that are waiting for you to take hold and move you ahead toward your success.

You can change hopeless negativity, but not holding onto those thoughts or attitudes. These are things that you usually dwell on. And wherever your attention is, your mindset follows.

For example, if you continually dwell on all that needs repairing in your home, you’ll start to dislike where you live. You’ll feel miserable and start wishing you could move. Then you’ll start thinking about how you can’t afford to move and you’ll feel trapped.

So the one negative thought mushrooms and becomes this huge thing that makes you feel hopeless. Then you feel helpless to change your situation - all because your mind says there’s nothing you can do.

But if you look at the repairs in your home as an opportunity to fix it up the way you want it to be, or to make improvements that you like better, you’ll notice that your attitude has changed about it.

The attitude changed because the mindset did. Examine any negative or hopeless thought that comes into your mind. Take charge of it and ask yourself what opportunities are hidden in the situation.

Then find them and focus on those instead. Make it a habit to seek the positive and let it be how you start and end your day. Begin your day by thinking a positive thought. It can be something about it being a beautiful day or something like you get to have your favorite cup of coffee.

End your day the same way. Start a habit of writing down at least 3 good things that happened to you that day, that you learned, that you accomplished. This habit is what teaches you to notice what’s good.

When you look for the positive, it makes you feel better and it changes your perspective from one that life is happening to – to something that you’re in control of. You discover that you make your own happiness and that it’s not determined by external haves or have nots.

You must keep in mind that whichever mindset you feed is the one that grows. If you feed the negative mindset, it blooms into something that can easily overwhelm the good. If you feed the good mindset, it blooms and gains control rather than the negative side.

Becoming Sure of Your Success Mindset Until You Follow Through

It’s one thing to talk about a success mindset. Another to live it. You might want a success mindset but not be sure about your ability to achieve it or unsure if you can carry on until you do follow through and reach your goals.

Your environment can often determine your ability to follow through. The rule of thumb is always negative in, negative out. Spend enough time in a negative environment and you’ll end up affected.

If all the people you have in your circle practice a negative mindset and they seem to see the problems instead of the hope in even trying, before long, you’ll be spouting the same words they’re speaking.

You’ll see gloom and doom. You’ll see all the reasons why you can’t accomplish your dreams. You’ll think about how success is for others, not you. You’ll look at their lives and see how they too, are just like you.

They didn’t succeed, so what makes you think you can? Everyone has their own personality. They’re the sum parts of the way they were raised, the friends they have, the habits they perform.

But what carries the a lot of weight in anyone’s life are the people that you hang with. These are the people that you look to for advice. They’re the ones that you complain to on the phone.

They’re the ones that influence your decisions. If your environment is made up of negative influences, it has to change in order for you to succeed. You can become sure of your success mindset by reframing what you’re up against.

You might feel that there’s no way you can succeed. So reframe that what you’re up against isn’t something insurmountable. Instead, it’s something that’s going to offer you a learning experience.

What this does is take you out of your comfort zone and allow you to push beyond self-imposed mindset limitations. You’ll be able to see the accomplishments rather than the failures.

You must push past the limits that you’ve set for yourself in the past. As you stretch your mindset, it lets go of the mental blocks that hold your success hostage. It frees you up to take risks, to step beyond what you thought you were capable of.

Instead of thinking that there’s no way you can succeed, you’ll begin to view yourself as someone who’s in control of his success. You follow through by welcoming mistakes as an opportunity to learn and rise above the issues.

When you practice a success mindset, it lets you choose to move. It also lets you acknowledge that you need to learn with grace rather than allowing it to be the thing that holds you back.

You become sure of your success mindset when you change your thought processes. When you stop going through life saying, “I can’t” or “I might fail” and instead saying, “Good things are going to happen for me,” then by your actions, you make that positive outcome a reality.

Action Steps You Can Take to Develop a Success Mindset

Practice positive affirmations. Doing this will help you realize that you’re good enough and that what you need to succeed, you already possess. Positive affirmations can help you see yourself as worthy and strong as well as capable.

These affirmations can help you break free from a negative mindset that leads to self sabotaging behavior such as not even trying to go after success. Your brain reacts to repeated positive affirmations and accepts them as truth.

When you speak them, use the present tense. Choose affirmations such as, “I am successful and talented. I recognize my abilities and other people recognize my abilities.”

Your brain then begins to create positive thoughts based on that affirmation. Your body and your attitude then follow along. Your action steps will be based in the belief that you can achieve your goals.

Follow success stories. Find the stories that motivate and inspire you. Watch documentaries of people that have similar goals that you also want to reach. Study what they did and how they overcame obstacles.

Watching other successful people in action fills you with a can-do attitude. You start thinking that if that person can do it, then so can you. Create a vision board. When you create a board that uses a selection of images representing what your success is, it creates an image of what can be.

The board is a tangible view of what you want to achieve. When you have a vision board, you use the power of visualization to prompt a success mindset. The board sinks into your subconscious mind and lets you see things you may not have realized before.

A vision board acts as a reminder that success is yours. Having one can help you choose action when fear creeps in. It can also help you remember to believe in yourself and to keep your brain focused on the positive, which is the outcome of your goals.

The board should be a visual representation of your success story unfolding. Practice the law of attraction. Know what it is that you want to attract to your life. Believe that you have it in you to make all your dreams come true.

Success is Attitude too

If you want to achieve your greatest potential in your life then one of the most important step is to monitor your attitude and its impact on your performance, your relationships and everyone around you. It’s difficult to be happy and content professionally (not to mention personally) if you’re constantly overworked and stressed out. But there’s an easy way to become both happier and more successful quickly. It’s as simple as this: change your attitude.

Here are some of the ways that the right attitude can make you more successful:

Self-Motivation through Discovering Your Motives

Discover what motivates you in a positive way to take action to change your life. Basic motives include love, self-preservation, anger, financial gain and fear. Self-motivation requires enthusiasm, a positive outlook towards life, a positive physiology and a belief in yourself and your God-given potential.

The Power of Visualization

Studies have shown that peak performers use affirmations and visualizations either consciously or subconsciously to enhance and focus on their skills. Nelson Mandela has written extensively on how visualization helped him maintain a positive attitude while being imprisoned for 27 years. “I thought continually of the day when I would walk free. I fantasized about what I would like to do,” he wrote in his autobiography. Visualization works well to improve attitude.

Exercising Will Help Keep You Motivated

One of the best ways to move to a more positive and motivated frame of mind is to exercise. A regular exercise routine can provide relatively quick positive feedback in the form of not only losing weight or muscle development but brings a sense of doing something positive for yourself.

Create positive impressions.

It is no secret that life seems to reward us most when we approach the world with a positive attitude. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. It probably comes as no surprise, but when you have a good attitude, you’re more likely to present yourself to others in a positive light.

Good impressions can lead to many potential benefits. Employers may be more likely to choose you as a new hire. Co-workers, colleagues, and potential partners will be more inclined to work with you.

Deeper connections.

A good attitude creates positive first impressions, which are the gateway to developing deeper personal and professional connections. Ultimately, this can create in-roads in business, so that you can forge positive, lasting relationships with employers, colleagues, and potential partners.

Remember: when opportunity knocks, there’s someone doing the knocking. You want people to think of you when opportunities arise, and your connections are the key to making this happen.

Gain more confidence.

If you want to be more confident then there are variety of things that can help you from visualization to improving your posture to dressing nicely for success. However, none of these exercises will be very effective without the right attitude.

When you have a good attitude then you likely to put efforts for self-improvement exercises and continue getting stronger. In short, a positive outlook will make it possible to keep getting better, and this positive progress can boost your confidence big time in the long term.

You’ll be happier.

By adopting the right attitude, you stand to gain in so many ways, but perhaps the most profound is that it will make you feel happier. When you feel happier, things seem far more achievable in life.  Day in and day out, they can have a profound effect on your career -- and life.

So, consider shifting to an attitude of gratitude and apply it to your work moving forward. You have everything to gain!