How to Remain Positive and Advance Even After a Failure?

Life is full of paradoxes, and one of the most difficult of these paradoxes is knowing whether to raise the ceiling or keep it low. You must know what attitude you will adopt in this regard as a prerequisite for reaching your potential to the maximum level.

The late American writer Zig Ziglar says: “Every person can succeed. However, to become successful, a person must plan for success, and do everything that would pave the way for them to succeed, and then they must expect success.”

On the contrary, one of the most famous poets of the eighteenth century, Alexander Pope, said, “How happy is he who expects nothing, because he will never be bitterly disappointed.”

The first quote emphasizes the necessity of expecting success, and the other one suggests that it is wise not to expect success so that we don't get frustrated when we fail. So, what attitude should we adopt?

It took me years to develop a middle ground between the two concepts that helped me succeed.

The importance of a positive attitude:

You need a positive attitude if you want to achieve success, and this is what all successful people in various fields emphasize. The successful person does not say to themself, I will try this or that and I will wait for the result, but they do their best and give their best and always expect success. 

However, the mental attitude is only part of the equation of success, and unless optimism is accompanied by work, optimism will be unrealistic dreams even if you possess all the necessary talents. Also, unless you employ this talent at work, you will not reach your potential to the maximum level.

Being successful at work and making contributions that make you appreciated requires a lot of work. To reach our full potential, we must put learning at the top of our list of priorities rather than entertainment; This means that you can't achieve greatness without letting go of the weekend fun, stop watching movies every day, and other time-wasting activities.

The danger of reducing expectations:

Expecting success can have devastating effects if a person does not possess psychological toughness. For me as an optimist, this positive attitude helped me a lot to overcome difficulties, but despite that, I was not positive throughout my life. At the beginning of my twentieth, I felt completely frustrated and despair of achieving any goal. 

Because of the frequent failures, I became disappointed, especially after I graduated from university. I tried to start several projects and every project was doomed to failure except for the one I found with my father. I simply felt that I was unable to achieve success on my own, but I now realize that it was too early to begin, and I was on the verge of giving up once and for all because of the disappointment that followed my high expectations. I was fortunately able to move on and maintain a positive attitude to life.

So, what matters is not whether you fail or not, what matters is how you react if you fail. Since it is never wise to get frustrated and feel pity for yourself and refuse to fulfil your responsibilities, you should be indifferent to the results.

But I still believe that it is necessary to expect success in every aspect of career, relationships, and making money, so set a big goal and do your best to improve your character as much as possible, so that you manage your time wisely, and in a way that benefits you.

Compare your current character to your former character:

Writer Jordan Peterson advises this in his book 12 Rules For Life. The secret of this advice is that you focus only on yourself, and then you cannot be disappointed by external factors. Jordan says” in his book: “Do your best, and if you fail, you will be able to do better next time, so nothing can discourage you.” 

After you realize this fact, failure will never be a disaster. You may feel sad or disappointed when things do not go the way you expected and this is normal, as no one likes failure, but what you should not do is blame others or blame yourself.

The bottom line is to take it all easily. We all know that blaming others is what people who lack wisdom do because that only leads to hate and resentment and destroys relationships. Conscientious and positive people know that, but they get into the trouble of scolding themselves, which is also wrong.

Be confident in your ability to succeed instead of blaming external factors:

Here are some tips to help you strike a balance between raising expectations and keeping them low:

1. Be very optimistic about your abilities, do your best, and strive to reach your potential to the most complete level.
2. Do not rely on external factors for success, and do not expect anything from others.
3. Understand that you have no control over external factors, so do not scold yourself for disappointing results.
4. Scold yourself only when you are not doing your best because that's something you can control.

In conclusion:

Stop worrying about what you can't control. Nobody has answers to everything. Although we all strive to understand the secret of success in our careers, our relationships, and most importantly the motives behind our actions, these are questions that can never have definitive answers. All we can do is work. If you fail, you will learn, but do not give up.