We’ve all been there where we had to bounce back from failure. We wish we were never put in that position in the first place but failure is a natural part of life. There are tangible steps that you can take starting today so that you can stay on track and continue down your path.
I wish I could tell you I never failed but that would be a big fat lie. There’s been so many times that I hit rock bottom more times than I would like to admit. The steps that I took below in response to my failures have been instrumental in getting me back on track.
In March 2020, do you know how much of my net worth I lost in a single month? I lost $90,000. It was soul crushing. Do you want to know how much I lost from going to the casino? I lost close to $25,000 by the time I was 24 years old. I remember going back to my hotel room just feeling like I hit rock bottom.
It was awful. Trust me when I say I’ve been there and I know how much it hurts to be in that position. You don’t feel like there’s ever a future where you come out on top again. You also feel impatient that you need to make back what you lost the next day. That’s the worst spot to be in.
Impatience will stop you from bouncing back from failure. In fact, it digs a deeper hole most of the time. Your mind is your greatest asset and it works best without any pressure or rush from outside forces. The number one thing you shouldn’t do is think of ways to get back to even as quickly as you lost it.
How to Bounce Back From Failure
One way to bounce back from failure is to SMASH that social share button and post to your favorite social media for your friends to see! They may be at a rock bottom point in their lives and may not really want to share or talk about it. Therefore, this article can help them through something that they don’t want to publicly talk about.
No matter who it is, everyone experiences setbacks, failures, and hitting rock bottom at some point in their lives. It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s about how many times you get back up. The successful ones got up just one more time more than the one who gave up and failed.
Life is going to throw you curveballs in ways you never even imagined it would. Even though there are bad moments, the good moments outweigh the bad ones. Therefore, if you can bounce back from failures and go back in the ringer to crush your goals, you’re on your way to success.
1) Figure Out Why You Failed to Bounce Back from Failure
This isn’t about assigning blame. This is about figuring out the why you failed part so you can learn from it in the future. Think logically, rationally, and matter of factly. Take the emotions out of it. Objectively evaluate how you got into your position. Is it truly because of outside factors?
Maybe you were dealt a bad hand or the birth lottery wasn’t kind to you. In which case, it’s time to put in 2x as much effort as another who were dealt a good hand. It’s how you play the hand that ultimately determines your end results. Don’t let being dealt a bad hand be a reason why you don’t come out on top.
It may objectively have been your own fault that you are in the situation. This isn’t to beat yourself up, but it could be a factually correct statement that you were the reason why. If so, then it’s time to figure out why you made the choices you did so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes twice.
Mistakes are everywhere. It’s when we learn what not to do that makes the whole world of difference.
2) Let Time Pass
To bounce back from failure, you have to let a very long time pass. Your emotions are running high on the day of your loss. That’s not healthy. It’s time to get back to a state of neutrality. To get to a state of neutrality, your feelings can’t be triggered from one extreme to another.
Give it a very GOOD amount of time. If it was a particularly devastating loss, give it 6+ months to recover and reclaim your mentality and confidence. When I lost $90,000, I lost all confidence in my ability to invest. I didn’t change my investing strategy at all but I still lost the willpower and the confidence.
It took me six months before I started to believe again. Before I started to realize that it was not as bad as I thought it was and I have a clear path to returning back to normal. When your physiological and biological rhythm is out of sync with your normal state of being, it takes time to heal.
Take it one day at a time.
3) Care Less
This is about not letting your feelings get to you. This is the hardest emotion to master because we are taught from a young age to practice empathy and actually care. While empathy and caring is good, too much of it is downright awful. Too much of it leads to depression and feeling down.
These days, when the market goes down 1% – 5% and I lose four to five figures of money in a single day, I really don’t care. It doesn’t affect me anymore. I just shrug and get back to work as if nothing happened. To bounce back from failure, you can’t let it affect you for a long period of time.
You can fail all you want but you can’t let it get to you at all. You did your best and there was nothing else that you could do. Instead of thinking about what happened, think about what will happen moving forward.
When I get rejected by a company after applying to a job, I shrug now. I gave it my best shot and I couldn’t make it even with my best shot. There was nothing else I could do so I just needed to move on.
4) Don’t Think About the Worst Case Scenario
I get it. You feel like you hit rock bottom and that your entire life is over and there’s no way that you can climb yourself out of the hole. This is how I felt when I got fired from my internship. I thought I was “damaged goods” and that what company will want to hire someone who got fired at their internship?
No, that’s wrong. That was just my fear taking over my brain instead of the rational and factually correct part of my brain taking over. I eventually found a high paying job and haven’t looked back. No one even really cared that I got fired anyway, which is the best part.
That’s how you should think to bounce back from failure. Your life isn’t over. You just failed, that’s it. The game isn’t close to being over. The game is only over if you decide that the game is over. Think about how many things you already survived through.
Heartbreaks, failures, fired from a job, etc. etc. Did you ever think that your life was over? Was your life actually over? I bet it wasn’t.
5) Accept Responsibility
When you fail, there are countless outside factors and people that you could blame. There’s an infinite number of variables. However, focus on what you can control. The person who you can control the easiest is yourself. You took on the task and made choices that made to your downfall.
Accept the responsibility that you could have made different choices that could have dug you out of the hole. Depend on no one else but yourself. No one else is going to make your life successful for you, you will have to do it yourself.
If you blame others for your downfall, they’re not going to accept the responsibility for it even if they are actually responsible for it. Do you want to spend time trying to get others to admit something they’re not going to admit to or do you want to evaluate what different choices you’ll make next time?
6) Focus on What You Have, Not What You Have to Bounce Back From
To bounce back from failure, you focus on what tools you already have at your disposal. What you just lost is irrelevant. Don’t focus on what you just lost. Move on. The past is irrelevant, what matters is the future.
Instead of spending time and energy trying to figure out how to get back to even, spend time and energy figuring out what you need to do next. The former is a waste of time while the latter adds value to your life. It’s the actions you’ll take on next that’s going to make the difference in your life.
Not the actions you already took.
7) Accept Failure is a Part of Life and You’re Not the Only One
Everybody fails. Even Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, etc. all failed miserably. Do you remember Fire Phones? Zune? Yeah, me neither. Those are gigantic failures experienced by even the best of the best. If they had to bounce back from failure, imagine how much others have to do so as well.
I know I’m going to fail a lot harder in the future than before. As long as I’m failing 20% of the time and succeeding 80% of the time, I know that everything’s going to work out by the end. It’s just a part of life. You should learn to accept that you will keep failing in the future as well.
Everybody goes through it. The only ones who didn’t fail are the ones who didn’t try at all. If you don’t want to fail, don’t try anything. Not trying anything is worse than failing. You’re just a bystander watching everyone else have fun right in front of your eyes.
Therefore, just accept the failing is necessary and it’s going to continuously happen to you.
8) Keep Fighting the Good Fight to Bounce Back from Failure
However bad you feel right now, don’t give up. Stay in the ring and keep fighting. You can’t bounce back from failure if you never step foot in the ring ever again. Do you really want that to happen? Most likely not. You’re going to wake up the next day and continue putting in the hours and brainstorming how to move forward.
Winners aren’t these magical creatures who have everything figured out by the time they left the womb. Winners are the ones who got back up just one last time before they had a huge breakthrough. By staying in the fight, you increase the chances of winning.
Very rarely in life you will ever dominate your opponent without breaking a sweat. It’s all about increasing your chances of winning, not making your chances of winning 100%.
9) Focus on What’s Working
If you want to bounce back from failure, it’s time to focus on the things that are working, not on the things that aren’t. When Under Armor started, they never tried to do everything. They bet the entire company on one line of clothing that was selling well.
Bouncing back from failure means that you’re ignoring the things that aren’t adding value and giving attention to things that are. If you failed, that’s a clear indication that it wasn’t working. We rarely fail at everything. Therefore, outline which things are actually working well for you.
Then spend time and effort trying to make those areas better. You don’t want to do too many things at once. Drowning in opportunity is a real thing. You don’t want to be a well rounded person. You want to be the biggest, baddest, and meanest at one thing that everyone else is so scared to go up against you for.
10) Don’t Let the Past Affect Your Future
Whatever happened, already happened. Even if you think a better life is impossible right now, don’t let the future be muddied by what already happened. The past should have zero bearing on how you’ll end your life out. You are more than what you started with. You are about where you are going. Your potential.
Your starting point is meaningless when it comes to your overall success. Don’t be forever stuck to where you came from or the times you failed. To bounce back from failure, your bright future should never be impacted or affected by your past.
Just like the stock market, past results is not indicative of future results.
Bouncing Back from Failure is a Part of Life
You’re not out of the ordinary having to bounce back from failure. Everyone’s all been there. Remember the $90,000 that I lost in the stock market plus $25,000 that I lost in the casino? I still came out ahead. I can’t imagine how further along I would be if I didn’t fail, but I’m still happy with where I am.
That only happened because I never gave up and lost faith. No matter what low point I was at, I always stuck and made choices that was working. No matter what my losses were, as long as I never lost more than what was already working for me, I knew I was going to be just fine afterwards.
So then everything is now up to you. When you fail, will you just mope around and feel bad that you failed? You’re not special. If you failed, everyone else did as well. Don’t take yourself so seriously that you think you’re alone in experiencing monumental failure.
Do you know who has the infamous honor of losing more money than anyone else in the history of the world? Masayoshi Son. During the tech crash, he lost more than $70 billion dollars, which was more than anyone else in the history of the world. It’s not Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or any other person. It’s Masayoshi who lost the most.
However and whatever you failed in, there is literally and physically no way that you did worse than him. He still came out ahead anyway. He’s worth about $35.8B in 2021. Therefore, no matter how low of a life point you are at, you can always get back to a higher point.
It’s not pleasant to bounce back from failure. However, the power to do so lies with you.
How to Bounce Back from Failure List:
- Figure out why you failed to bounce back from failure
- Let time pass
- Care less
- Don’t think about the worst case scenario
- Accept responsibility
- Focus on what you have, not what you have to bounce back from
- Accept failure is a part of life and you’t not the only one
- Keep fighting the good fight to bounce back from failure
- Focus on what’s working
- Don’t let the past affect your future
