Failure sucks. But if your planning on doing anything important you are going to have to get used to it. Embarrassment, frustration and even bad situations you can't control are going to be part of life. What can you actually do about them instead of just having a “positive attitude?”
失败的感觉糟透了。但是如果你打算做任何重要的事情,你就必须要习惯这种感觉。难堪、沮丧,甚至是一些你无法控制的糟糕的情况都会是生活中的一部分。只有“积极的态度”是不够的,你还应该做些什么呢?
1. Find a Meaning
1. 找到一种意义
Ask yourself how you can use the bad experience. Here are some ways you can find a meaning in your situation to move past it:
问问自己该怎样利用这段糟糕的经历。你可以通过下面这个问题来发现某段糟糕经历的意义,从而走出这段痛苦:
What has it taught you?
它教给你什么?
Has it made you stronger/kinder/wiser?
它是否让你更坚强/更善良/更睿智?
Even simply enduring a bad moment has meaning in making your happy moments better.
哪怕只是单纯地忍受一段糟糕的时间也有它的意义:让你的快乐时光显得更快乐。
2. Keep a Failure Log
2. 写失败日志
Keep track of any failures, embarrassments or blunders. Using a failure log you can give yourself a little checkmark of accomplishment. It may seem odd to reward failures in this way, but rewarding your failures serves two main purposes:
记录你经历的任何失败、难堪或错误。通过写失败日志你可以发现自己都犯过那些错误。这样对待失败似乎有些奇怪,但它有两个主要目的:
It makes you more willing to take chances when the only risk is to your pride.
当唯一的风险是你的自尊时,你会更愿意冒险。
It causes you to focus more on learning and growth than external recognition.
你会更专注于学习和成长,而不是外界的看法。
I've even heard from other people that if they don't have at least a few major failures each year, they don't believe they were trying hard enough.
我甚至听人说过,如果他们每年没至少犯几个大错误,他们都不相信自己已经足够努力了。
3. Find a New Goal
3. 寻找一个新目标
Don't dwell in the past. The best way to get out of a rut is to start building momentum again. Get a new goal or pursuit. A new challenge will get you to stop thinking about your failure and get you to focus on something positive. A new goal will also give the opportunity for future successes instead of dwelling on a current stumble.
不要活在过去。走出深渊的最好办法就是重新开始积累动力。寻找一个新的目标或追求。一个新的挑战会让你停止思考之前的失败,专注于积极的东西。一个新的目标还会为未来的成功提供机会,而不是纠结于眼前的失败。
4. Remove Chronic Sources of Stress
4. 消除长期的压力来源
Your ability to handle big stresses depends on how well you handle the little ones. If your life is constantly driving you crazy, you need to reconstruct it to better handle stress. There are already many resources on handling stress, but here are a few quick tips:
你处理沉重压力的能力取决于你应对较小压力的能力。如果你的生活一直让你感到崩溃,你需要重新调整一下,以便更好地应对压力。关于如何应对压力已经有很多方法,下面是一些快速减压小妙招:
Keep your energy high by staying in shape.
保持体形以确保自己有旺盛的精力。
Fire people from your life who are a source of chronic negativity.
把那些长期给你带来消极因素的人赶出你的生活。
Find outlets for your stress that help you recover instead of intensifying the frustration.
为你的压力找个出口会有助于减压而不会加剧沮丧情绪。
5. Build a Support Base
5. 打造一个后援团
Building a support base of colleagues and mentors will help you when times are rough. This is definitely a situation where you need to prepare in advance. Even if you aren't having to deal with a particularly difficult situation right now, you might need some reinforcement in the future.
打造一个同事和顾问组成的后援团,会在艰难时刻为你提供帮助。你需要为此提前做好准备。哪怕你现在并没有面临什么棘手的问题,未来你也许会需要一些帮助。
Have the right peers and mentors who will encourage you past your mistakes. Here are some tips for attracting the right people into your life:
找一些能够鼓励你走出错误阴影的伙伴和顾问。下面这些建议告诉你如何把这些对的人吸引到你的生活中来:
You give what you get. Be extra attuned to the needs of your friends and they will do the same.
你给予什么就得到什么。更习惯于你朋友的需求,他们也会同样对待你。
Spend less time on negative people. If you can't eliminate them entirely, reduce your interactions so you can focus more on better relationships.
离那些消极的人远一些。如果你不能把他们完全赶出你的生活,那就减少你们的接触,这样你就可以更专注于良性的关系。
6. Be Humble
6. 保持谦虚态度
A sense of humility and humor can keep you moving forward when things are tough. I'm not a follower that says overwhelming confidence is the approach to success. Being humble in your abilities but confident in your chances to grow will let you shrug off failures. I never would have stuck to blogging unless I had cultivated the humility that told me it would be a lot of hard work.
谦逊感和幽默感可以帮助你在艰难时刻继续前进。我并不相信压倒性的自信心就可以通向成功。在自己的能力上保持谦虚,但在自己成长的机会上保持自信,这会让你摆脱失败。如果不是我的谦逊感告诉我我要付出很多努力,我可能就不会坚持写博客。
Humility doesn't necessarily mean you have low self-esteem. It just means you are focused more on doing things without expecting immediate success.
谦虚并不意味着你就要自卑。这只是说你应该更关注做事情本身,而不是期待短时间内取得成功。
Many Eastern philosophies emphasize goalless action. This doesn't mean that you should not strive for anything, but that you should detach yourself from the outcome. If you win, great. If you lose, then you are one step closer.
许多东方的哲学思想都强调无为而治。这并不是说你什么都不该争取,而是说你不要关注结果。如果你赢了,当然很好。如果你输了,你至少离成功又近了一步。
7. Stop Analyzing and Start Doing Something New
7. 不要再分析,开始做些新的事情
There is a maximum limit to how much you can learn from an experience. That limit is actually fairly small with an isolated incident. If you give one speech and it fails, you might be able to learn one or two points of improvement. That's it. Anything you “learn” after this threshold is just speculation which is often incorrect.
你能从一段经历当中学习当的东西是有上限的。就一个单独的事件而言,其实极其有限。如果你发表了一次演讲结果失败了,你也许可以学会在一两点上做出改进。仅此而已。而在这之后你所“学到”的东西其实只不过是些推测,而且多半还不正确。
I've seen people in failed relationships, goals that went sour or broken commitments, try to learn everything from just one failure. Unfortunately, the only way you can learn isn't just to fail once but to fail dozens of times. Trying to scoop up too much information on a bad situation just leaves you feeling miserable with the false sensation that you are accomplishing something useful.
我见过那些经历了情感破裂、目标失败或承诺破碎的人,他们试图从一次失败里学会一切。不幸的是,你想要学会,唯一的办法不是经历一次失败,而是无数次失败。试图从一次失败里总结出过多的信息只会让你感觉痛苦,让你误以为自己做了一件很有用的事。
After you've gathered a couple learning points, stop. Start doing something new. Pick out a new goal and move forward. After all, isn't that what failures are for? To give you a small learning point and direct you towards bigger and better things?
当你总结出一些经验之后就停下来。开始做一些新的事情。选择一个新的目标,开始前进。毕竟这才是失败的意义,不是吗?给你一点小的教训,再指引你朝着更大更好的东西前进,对不对?