Ask Lemmy

If you aren't failing you aren't really working/learning.

Life is entirely built on failing, learning, moving onward, and doing it all over again. Every day.

If you are stressing out about failing, you are focused on the wrong thing.

I'd bet real money that the majority of stupid/unbearable/boring people you meet in life are the sort of people that never learn from their mistakes.

Yer gonna fail. It's happening right now. Learn something.

FINALLY, something I can meaningfully contribute to.

I could give you a 'boo-hoo' story about how i failed to get into medical school the first time. Well I am. It was absolutely soul-crushing and morale-decimating. It was one of the hardest struggles I've ever had. It threw me into an identity crisis and compounded with my in-progress imposter syndrome in ways that would spark nothing but self-loathing and depression.

For months I agonized and isolated myself in my room until I realized that If I don't try for my own future, no one else can or will. Took a bit of self reflection to realize the fault lied with me. Took me an even longer time to figure out what mistakes killed my application, how, why, and formulate a plan to avoid repetition. The process took me 3 years. I won't tell you exactly how old I am, but people my age are getting married, buying houses, making 6-figure incomes, etc. By contrast, I am barely making minimum wage and banding together couch surfing and splitting rent with my friends.

It's tough not to compare myself to everyone else's situations. This was made worse by the fact my family and friends (maybe 45% of them) constantly shit talk me behind my back. Sometimes wine comes back up the grape-vine. Sometimes it isn't a sweet Rosso. I kept chugging along despite some of my friends and family acting as headwinds against me.

I kept up this process for 3 years, believing that I could actually do it. That maybe one day I won't be earning 10 dollars an hour working 50 hours a week. Most of all, I felt that I had a real purpose and goal to work toward. Medicine.

I am very proud to report to Lemmy that I actually got accepted to 5 different medical schools so far! I felt bad even turning down one offer for another.

How I got over my failure and crisis of identity? Maybe it was ego. Maybe it was my hurt pride. Maybe it was selfishness. Maybe it's because I am too stubborn to take "no" for an answer for something that means so much to me. I choose to believe that I worked hard for it and was able to swallow my pride and keep on chugging along patiently working for the light at the end of the tunnel.

Don't get me wrong, the light at the end of the tunnel is still an on-coming train. Medical school is hell. I realize it is nothing but hard work and suffering. Nothing would make me happier than to go into a field that makes a direct difference in people's lives.

TLDR: Medical school :D -> rejection D: -> depression D: -> epiphany :/ -> hard work :( -> a brighter future perhaps :).

This isn't a general formula or anything. I just haven't been able to talk to anyone about any of this. I feel that emptying out my feelings into the void of the internet might be kind of therapeutic. I never thought I'd share any of my deepest feelings on the internet, let alone reddit. Here, I feel comfortable to do so.

Plant the seed. Keep on watering. As long as the soil you choose to plant isn't salted, you will reap the rewards your past self has sown.

I failed a professional certification. I learned from my mistakes, took it again a year later, and passed.

I had a six-month-long marriage. My ex-wife was not a nice person and everyone else could see it almost immediately, but I was swept away by how determined to be with me she was. It felt so good to have a woman who was attractive, successful, and very, very interested in me. Too good to be true, as it turned out. I'm not sure exactly what was wrong with her - something like borderline personality disorder? Once I committed to her, she became very jealous and would go from sweet to angry frequently and with no provocation. Although she only ever yelled at me, I was scared of her.

I've made mistakes in my life that were good for me because they were learning experiences. My marriage wasn't one of them - I wish that it had never happened. However, I did still learn from it:

1. Don't look down so much on people who make obvious, foolish mistakes. You might end up as one of them. I didn't think I was the kind of person who would ever get divorced but here I am...

2. Admitting that you made a big mistake feels terrible, but the real problem is the big mistake, not the admission of it. I was a fool to be married for just six months, but I would have been a bigger fool if I stayed in that marriage longer than that. I'm still ashamed that I married my ex, but I'm proud that I had the courage to leave.

3. Time does heal wounds. All my hopes and dreams about the future with her were garbage, my judgement was no better than that of a daytime talk-show guest, and my humiliation was known to every single person who was important to me, since they were all at my wedding. Then years passed, and while I still haven't spoken to some more distant relatives simply because I don't want to explain that I'm not with my ex-wife any more, I have in fact moved on with my life.

I fail at socializing every day. Only to try again later and fail again. You can only get yourself back up so many times.

Had a good wallowing, thinking my life was over. Then slept on it. But yeah - just a refusal to let whatever it was be the end. And to continue not for others but for myself.

I've told a few stories before, but really what it comes down to is: Yes, all the time.

And every time, I eventually bounced back stronger. Not only that, I bounced back less afraid of failure. As long as you learn something from failing, it's just a stepping stone to something better.

I've been a software engineer for the last 17 years, with the last 11 years having been in management. The further people get in their career the easier it is to forget to stay humble. You can't always be the smartest person in the room. It's statistically unlikely. One of my favorite books I've read is "The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do" (not to be confused with "The Secret"). The book covers how you can stay humble in your career, reinvent yourself, value the contributions of others, etc. The fact is that even if you end up in a leadership position, you won't necessarily be the smartest person in the room. Even if you made a great decision for the team years ago, that may not hold up now. Be open to the fact that you're wrong. Be open to change. If you can't do that then you're going to end up set aside as a dinosaur. Adapt. If you don't then you'll be left behind. And be kind, because you never know who you'll work with again. Being smart isn't carte blanche to be an asshole to anyone who isn't as smart as you. You'll likely need them at some point if you stick around long enough.

Not failing at what you are trying hard to do? Not learning.

You should never expect to succeed all the time, or it will be your downfall, long term.

Sure, we fail.all the time. While I haven't been fired, I've been laid off twice, I've quit places, I've caused fires that gave me debts, I've realized I grew up in a cult and probably harmed people while doing so.

I'm going to paraphrase a book series I enjoy:

What is the most Important step a man must take? The next step. No matter how bad it gets, taking the next step is the most important.

Actually I see failing as the key to success. It either tells me what I did wrong and what are the things I need to improve or that the thing I tried to achieve was not for me and I can go on improving elsewhere.

I flunked out of college. I was undiagnosed ADHD and my major was something that I genuinely have a passion for. But wasn't able to discipline myself to go to classes regularly. I don't think I would have done well in that field anyway.

It didn't really hurt me though, I ended up in a job that underpaid for too long until I got proper medical treatment for my ADHD and depression. Now I make a decent salary in a field that works well for me.

I love what I learned and would love to learn more, but the structure of college was something that was extremely tough to work through.

The last time I failed at something at it being 100% my fault, was when I had to turn in a report on a fictional hotdog stand. It was a report about how you keep it clean and stuff. I had gotten it ready and was all set for turning it in. So while eating lunch at i suddenly remember that I had forgotten. So I call the school and they say 'tough luck' and that i have to wait an entire month to try again.

Well, it turned out i could just turn in the same report, but I got an entire month extra up prepare, and defend it on the same day as my classmates. I never really understood how any of that worked.

So long story short, nothing bad happened

Yep, all the time and good things always come after.

My father told me many many years ago that I always had to learn lessons the hard way. What he meant was that I have to make the mistake to learn from it, and I thought it was profound.

Took a long time for me to learn that’s what life is. You try, fail, and try again. You learn from it and succeed, and in the end does it really count as a failure? All the good things in my life have come out of all the bad.

Certainly it's awesome. Failing with flair is where the marrow is

Heck no! That sounds awful. /s

But seriously, when you read this, in your heart, you immediately knew I was bullshitting.

Everyone fails.

As Picard said "It is possible to do everything right, and still fail. That is not a tradgedy, it is life."

College was a fucking mess. It took me 14 years on and off to graduate and wrecked my finances.

But I fucking finished it.

Then I had trouble getting a job in my field and I worked retail for years and it sucked. But I eventually got a job at the front desk of the permit office at the city, and everything started coming together. Within 6 months I got a major promotion. A year later another, smaller city approached me, etc.

I am now making good money in a field I love. My coworkers are great, people respect me, and life is getting better all the time.

Because while I may have stalled several times, I never fucking quit.

Did three years in the feds. Damn near ruined my life but I worked hard and became an essential employee at a company that was willing to hire me knowing my past.

I wanna say I'm blessed or some shit but in reality I fucked up bad paid the price then fixed it with the help of good people.

I don’t usually get back up, I just go somewhere else or do something else where the novelty makes me feel like I haven’t failed yet. Weirdly, I got pretty good at things over time doing this and I fail a lot less

Constantly, I don't, I'm a failure.

Understand that you’ll do better next time.

In spite I push onward.

It has been said that you only really fail if you don't learn from the experience, this is true in most cases, escpacially those that makes you ask this question.

So to answer your question, you learn snd show others that you have learned.

Say you are working a papermill and you make a misstake causing and entire batch of product worth €5000000 to be ruined, a bad manager would just fire you, a good manager would understand that he just spent €5000000 training you not to do that, and that training would stick, and keep you.

College is 4 years and then you live your life for the next 40+. So what if you don't pass every class.

Blow stuff up learn something from it even if it's just that you didn't like or find something interesting and move on to the next thing.

My life is a string of failures. I won’t lie I’m probably not a person you want to end up like.

The way I keep going now is by realizing that the thing I’m running from isn’t a sense of failure, or a bad self image. The things I’m running from are literal hunger, literal pain, literal cold. As in, I’ve been homeless before, and I’m fortunate enough to have come through that intact, but it put a fear into me that drives me.

The reason I keep trying is because I’ve seen how fast it gets worse when I stop trying. Like, at my age things fall apart fucking fast if I start letting the depression win.

I’m now at the point where I know the steps I need to take to keep depression away. And I’m considering depression to be like “A state of no motivation”.

I’m starting to get a little stable, which is making space to see new larger meanings, larger than just keeping myself alive and out of pain.

Now I’m starting to see the other people around me trapped in the hopelessness. So I’ve decided I’m going to start being that one person who makes new social connections. Who reaches out and takes the initiative. Because others have done that for me.

So, staying alive gives me the motivation to get up and push hard. But not always consistently. Now, I’m starting to run into limitations in my social skills. I’m rough, and caustic. I cuss a lot.

Now the whole game is learning to keep a tight operation. I can afford to fall off many different wagons, while I’m surviving, and still survive. I’m actually pretty hardy, and I can survive a lot of the effects of my fuckups in life.

But what can’t survive those intermittent collapses — those junk food and weed binges — is my role in the community. I want to be there for people who need someone, and if I’m inconsistent then I can’t do that.

So that’s the meaning pulling me up from fighter into … shopkeeper? Priest? I don’t know. Someone with a consistent schedule, whom you know where to find, who’s got the energy and time to give you some attention when you badly need it.

Currently in the throes of attempting to trade for a living.

What has helped me immensely is to 'denature' goals so that I can measure success beyond something binary like "did I achieve X". Instead, I will specify more subtle signs of progress/improvement, and track those instead. That way, even when I fall short of the ideal outcome, I still have actionable, helpful takeaways that can assist w/ my next attempt. Repeat ad nauseum until success.

Another suggestion is to read books like 'Grit' and 'Resilience' and 'Mindset'.