5 Bounce Back From A Failure At Work

[A collaboration post – all thoughts are my own.]

Failing sucks, but failing at work might be even harder because it happens in front of people you see practically every day. Yet, failure at work is necessary for all of us. And, when new problems happen that have a serious influence on our way of life, many of us are experiencing more failure than we imagined.

I’ve been working for six years now and we’re always making more mistakes—far more than any of us would be willing to admit. These situations are worsened when the people we work with point out our flaws at work. Coping with these mistakes and setbacks can be difficult, but it is an important aspect of progress. So, I’m going to show you how to rebound from a failure at work, from my experience.

Overcome negativity

If you’ve ever failed at work, you know how your ego can suffer in these situations. That is a universal fact. However, learning how to manage these breakdowns and the negativity that comes with failure at work can help you bounce back quickly!

This approach will help you in dealing with the disappointment and even embarrassment that comes with a work failure and will ensure that these negative emotions do not linger for too long. That means you need to think about what happened. Explain what went well as well as what did not. Why did everything go so well? Why did things go so wrong?

It could be because you are not focused or are juggling too many tasks at once. Answering these questions will give you valuable insights as well as an increased sense of self-awareness. This will give you lessons you can use to improve and become better the next time you handle a similar task.

Failure at work isn’t uncommon

We have a “Monday Meeting” routine while still working in the office. The day when all staff gathers in one room and the supervisor begins calling out the names of employees who make mistakes when interacting with clients one by one. I’m sure all of the staff, including myself, have heard their names mentioned.

The first thing to understand is that failure at work is not uncommon. Everyone makes mistakes, just like you. Our professional lives are simply moving too quickly, with requests piling up one on top of the other, and it seems that we’ll never catch up, let alone get ahead. These situations make mistakes, errors, and failures at work inevitable.

Anyone can break under pressure, so don’t waste time feeling embarrassed if you make a mistake at work. Accepting failure at work as an inevitable part of the process puts you in a good position to begin overcoming the unpleasant feelings and consequences of these situations.

Prepare yourself for the negative emotions

I made mistakes while working with translation agencies, and I’m extremely embarrassed because we’ve been working together for years. Being able to identify negative thoughts and emotions after making a mistake or error at work will help you manage them when they do try to harm your mental health. These could include embarrassment, disappointment, feeling worthless and useless, believing you have nothing to offer, thinking everyone else is better than you, and so on. I could certainly come up with an endless list because, as humans, we love to criticize ourselves, especially given all of our past mistakes and failures.

If you allow this to happen, your thoughts and emotions will cause harm to your mental health. So, just as if you were prepared to go to fight with someone else, you will create a plan to fight these feelings before they show themselves. This will put you in a good position to deal with these feelings.

Reflect, admit, apply, and repeat

It’s time to start reflecting on your current coping behaviors—you know, the ones where, after making a mistake, you go cry about it, and then watch a marathon of series and movies to comfort yourself. Obviously, you can’t keep using that strategy— they’re ineffective.

From here, you can start training yourself and shifting away from being defensive and toward developing self-awareness and learning from your mistakes in life. This is an important first step in learning how to bounce from failure at work. This is because, once you’ve done this and gained self-awareness, you can start applying the new methods you’ve just created for yourself and forming new patterns of behavior and habits that are far more beneficial to your own growth and success.

Even though I’ve been in the translation industry for a long time, I still make mistakes. I still need a dictionary, a lot of time to research, and so on. When I make a mistake while translating a story, I recall what I did wrong and write notes so I don’t make the same mistakes again.

I would advise you to go through some kind of this process of reflection and review anytime you fail at work or make a mistake in another aspect of your life. Repeating this process will allow you to change and adjust your strategies while also allowing you to improve and grow as a person.

Take responsibility

We’ve all met these people—the ones who believe they are never at fault for anything, no matter what role they played or how much impact they had on the outcome. These people are “finger-pointers”. They will blame everyone else before they even consider their own part in the situation.

I pity these people. They are not only not admired by their colleagues for this behavior, but they also grow at a far slower rate than the rest of us who are willing to acknowledge our mistakes and accept responsibility for them.

Avoid becoming a “finger-pointer” whenever you make a mistake, especially if it’s a failure at work because no one wants to work with someone who can’t accept responsibility or responsibility for their own actions and decisions. I understand that accepting responsibility and admitting mistakes can be difficult, especially when there are consequences for your actions. However, that level of responsibility is critical to your personal growth and development.

If there is one main message I want you to take away from reading this post today, it is that failure at work and mistakes in life can teach you a lot about yourself. To do so, you must first understand how to handle and overcome the negativity attached to these mistakes, as well as develop more effective coping strategies. If you can do that, you will go far on your own journey and achieve success!