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]