Failures are great podcast material

[Music]

[Applause]

close your eyes

and now raise your hand

if you have ever experienced a failure

now open your eyes

and look around can you see

everybody experiences failures

it’s a common theme of life

no matter how great our lives may be

we will eventually experience some

disappointments or setbacks

it’s not that i’m being pessimistic

i just stated the fact

and over the case

we have developed some irrational

beliefs about failures

and perhaps some of you may think

that if you fail

it means that you are bad

or that you will never succeed

and we somehow forgot

that failures

are actually stepping steps

towards achieving our goals

and probably the more ambitious

and the more difficult career path to

choose

the more failures

you will face on your way

let me tell you my story

i am a medical doctor and a phd student

and you may say that i succeeded

well

yes i achieved my goal

but my way was full of obstacles

eight years ago i decided to study study

medicine

and

i didn’t have enough points to get to a

medical university so i had to retake a

national exam

and to be honest it didn’t go so well

so i couldn’t apply to a medical

university in warsaw in a capital city

of poland where i already lived with my

boyfriend my sister and my friends

and i had to move

to a distant city in the north of poland

and i started medicine in ignis

moreover i had to pay for my education

because i didn’t get enough points

to get a free course

of studies

and at that time

all this

appeared to me as a great failure

and i struggled with feelings of low

self in

self esteem

and inferiority

on the one hand i was a medical student

who fulfilled her goals

to become a doctor

but on the other i i felt worse than my

peers

and i couldn’t stop thinking that i have

to prove everyone that i am good enough

to be a medical student

so what was the reason for that

and the reason

is that people tend to hide their

failures

people pretend that failures do not

exist

and that the only thing that matters is

success and people are more more likely

to show their success on the social

media

and they remain silent when something

bad happens

and it creates a false picture of the

world based on success

so

we feel worse

while comparing to those people

and i must admit that i’m not the only

one

who struggled with that kind of feelings

i am very active on social media where i

actively separate medical students

during their medical way

and we very often talk about our their

problems or difficulties

and you know what

medical students

feel a great social pressure

to achieve only successes without

allowing any samples

and they are overwhelmed by it

i’ve been thinking a lot about my ted

talk

and i was wondering

what i what ideas should i spread

and after all these years as a medical

student

i realized

that

nobody ever told me that it’s totally

okay to experience failures

and nobody warned me that during my

medical way

i will face a lot of obstacles

on my way

so

today

i want to emphasize

that failures do exist

and that we have to learn to cope with

our failures to achieve our goals

because

failures should not

hold us back

from achieving our goals

okay so yes now

i stated that failures do exist

so now i want to learn you how to cope

with your failures

so i want to invite you

on a

short course

on coping with your failures

lesson number one

react positively

it’s not that i want you to react like

yay i failed no nothing like that don’t

worry i just want to show you how we

behave how we react when

we are being positive or negative

so

when we face a failure

we are rather

angry or stressed or just sad

so negative emotions accompany us when

we face failures

and barbara frederickson a psychologist

from the north carolina

observed that

when we experienced negative emotions

it’s like our organism is prepared for a

dangerous situation

so

our sympathetic

nervous system is being activated which

results in a very narrow

visual focus and thinking

and

it’s like our organism is preparing

either to attack

or flame

so

in a case of coping with failures

our narrow thinking is not really

helpful right

so let’s see what happens when we react

more optimistic when we are being

positive and frederickson observed that

positive emotions

increase our physiological arousal

and it help us to broaden our vision to

think more clearly more creatively

so here you can see that positive

emotions they are really helpful while

coping with our problems

lesson number two

let’s try to reframe your failures

there is one more good thing about

positive thinking it’s like

it’s easier for you to step back

and see your failures in a totally

different perspective

and

this is called a positive reappraisal

that you try to imagine that failures or

not not imagine to perceive your

failures

as challenges

or sometimes you can even find some

opportunities

because you should always seek for some

kind of benefits in your difficult

situations

it’s just looking for good and it’s the

bad

lesson number three

let’s try to cope with our failures

are two coping strategies

the first one focuses on our emotions

and the second one

is more problem solving

more about problem solving

when something

goes wrong and we face failures

we are rather

stressed i know that i said that it’s

good to react positively but when

something goes wrong we are at the very

beginning uh rather full of negative

emotions so we have to cope with our

emotions

and i know that what i’m gonna say is

pretty obvious to you

but i really encourage you to go to cope

with your emotions in a healthy way

so

take a long bath

listen to your favorite music

go for a walk

it’s up to you you decide you just have

to find something which really helps you

to relax

and after you cope with your emotions

then you can move to cope with your

actual problem

and i know that when you face a failure

is sometimes difficult to move forward

but here are some tips

you should set a realistic goal

make a detailed list of all the tasks

you have to do

and then try to

productively manage your time

and i hope that all these coping

strategies

will help you to start again

and move forward

lesson number four

be patient

did you know that jk rowling spent seven

years on writing the first part of harry

potter

and that 12 different agent and

publishing houses rejected her book

and did you know that steve jobs was

actually fired from apple before he get

back and they succeeded

so

be patient

work hard

and persistently pursue your goals

and one day hopefully

you’ll succeed

so

now all now we all know that failures

are inevitable

and that we should

cope with them

to achieve our goals

and

remember

that you should never be ashamed of your

failures

because in the end

there are nothing but a bunch of

interesting stories

which you can use

as a great podcast material

thank you

[Applause]