Hi there
I have a good solution that works. It’s very simple: 1. Fail more. 2. Meditate. They work great in tandem.
Practice and embrace failing
The problem with failure is that we make a big deal out of it. How can we become good at failing? By practicing, of course. The same principle applies to anything we do in life: the more we practice, the better we get. It’s silly to believe that ‘avoiding’ failure is a good thing for someone who wants to become good at dealing with them.
Life is full of failures. It almost never goes according to plan. I guess you could say that we fail almost all the time. Although it’s only shortly after noon, I’ve already failed many times today. I gave into my laziness and failed at getting up early. I failed at being understanding of a person that I met with this morning. I failed at getting acknowledged by my colleague for something good that I had done. So many failures! Heck, maybe I should just go and bury myself!
The thing is that we have to understand that life will never fit our concepts. It will not turn out the way we want or have planned. We tend to live in a fantasy world in which we anticipate that life will need to be the way we want it to be. Although we may understand that this is just a fantasy, we subconsciously keep believing it. We attribute value and meaning to it. It’s time to stop this silly charade. Life will never work out the way we want. Period. Full stop.
In light of this, it is much better to just embrace failure as a part of life. Change your mind about failures. It’s not bad to fail. Instead, practice it as much as you can. Over time, it won’t be a big deal to fail. Naturally, we will have become good at dealing with failures.
Meditate
As a complement to the failing strategy, I strongly recommend meditation. The reason why we suffer after failing is because we feel ashamed (i.e. our pride is hurt), and/or we feel like we’ve missed out on an opportunity in life (this is due to our inferiority complex/greed).
Through meditation we can see the workings of our mind and let go of it. In other words, we can get rid of our pride, inferiority complex, and greed. The more we do this, the less we will get hung up in situations where things don’t go as we had hoped.
These days, I view failures (and successes also for that matter) merely as a feedback mechanism. They show me something about myself, my mind. I look at it, and I let it go with help of the meditation method. If the failure shows me anger and irritation, I let go of that. If the failure brings up hurt feelings, I let go of those. If it brings up jealousy, I throw that away.
The purpose of failing
I realize that everything is grateful because every ‘failure’ is an opportunity to free my mind by letting go. A free mind is a joyous mind. A free mind is the true and original mind. We must endeavor to free our mind and recover our true mind. I believe that is the true purpose of failures, and the purpose of life as well.
Happy failing! 😍
