Failure is part of the university experience and life. We’ve all failed sometimes whether that is failing an exam, not getting accepted into a certain programme, or something else. Yes, it hurts, but it also makes you stronger and teaches you a lot about yourself and how you handle a situation. Because it can be hard to navigate through failure at times, we share some tips on overcoming and learning from it in today’s blog.

#1 Feel and accept it

The first thing you should do when experiencing failure is to feel the uncomfortable emotions instead of escaping them. Failure is often accompanied by emotions such as embarrassment, anxiety, anger, sadness, shame, and more. Although these emotions are uncomfortable, it’s important to label them, sit with them and experience them. You are allowed to feel bad for a bit! That way you can accept that you’ve failed.

#2 Remind yourself that this is not the end

While feeling your emotions, also remember that this is not the end. You might think that failure defines who you are and your future, but that is not true! Failure happens to you, not something that describes you if that makes sense. We all fail in different ways in life whether that is in our career, in our love life, or at university. It’s completely up to you if you let failure define you, but it’s better to remind yourself that this is not the end.

#3 Stay objective

It’s also smart to stay objective. Try not to spiral and let your unrealistic thoughts about failure win. You might think that you’re never going to succeed, that you’re bad, and that you don’t deserve success, which are all completely normal thoughts to have while experiencing failure. Try to reframe your thoughts to something more positive and realistic though. You can handle failure, you can learn from failure, you will succeed again, you deserve success and failure is a sign that you are challenging yourself to do something difficult. Remind yourself of these things not to be consumed by negative thoughts.

#4 Take a break but don’t give up

As I said before, it’s okay to feel bad and maybe even take a break from the project you’re working on for a while. That’s when you think about it and figure out what you can learn from this experience of failure, which I will get to in a minute. However, don’t give up! You might have failed now, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t succeed in the future. Keep striving for your dreams!

#5 See what you can learn from it

To learn from failure you have to find the root cause of failure. It is a good idea to look at the feedback provided and meet your teacher to discuss the feedback if you fail an exam or assignment. When you know why you’ve failed, you can start improving these areas. You’ll learn what you can do differently in the future. In that way, failure is helpful and a valuable experience.

#6 Don’t lower your ambitions

This tip ties into the one about not giving up. After a few failures, you might want to aim lower or give up. Instead, stay focused on your goals. Even for highly motivated individuals, big goals can be intimidating. So, take it one step at a time. Through perseverance, you’ll succeed. Keep dreaming big!

#7 Move forward 

Once you’ve identified the root cause of failure and what lessons you can take from the experience, you can move forward by creating a plan of action. What steps can you take to improve? Additionally, you might be afraid to fail again, but instead of dwelling on the past think about your capability. Just go for it, do the thing and remind yourself that you can do it because you really can!

Do you want to know what other students at the UG have learned from failure? Watch our Voxpop reel! 

If you can’t wait, here are some of their answers:

• “I try to identify where things went wrong and then change and adapt my strategies.”

• “I deal with failure every day and I realise now that other people also deal with failure, it’s nicer to do like a community.”

• “I haven’t seen failures as failures, I have seen them as lessons in life. So, you learn from them as you live.”

Let us know which tips you’ve found especially helpful and what you do to overcome failure and learn from it in the comments below. You can do it!