How to Stop Feeling Like a Failure

Transcript:

“Loser is such a virile word, isn’t it? You can practically feel the testosterone slithering through its pronunciation.

The world seems to be divided into winners and losers: you’re either winning at life or FML. It seems kinda pointless to assign definitive terms to your status of being in your fluxing, undefinable existence but nevertheless you have concluded, upon reflection, that you are a total loser. This is likely because your friends all got decent jobs straight after graduation whilst you, a year later, are still unemployed or stuck in a dead end job. You’ve probably been single whole life and still a virgin in your mid-twenties, or you just got dumped for reasons that align with your ‘I’m a loser’ theorem. It may be because you didn’t get into the university you dreamed of attending, or just got rejected for PhD funding. You just can’t do anything right in life, you accidentally upset or hurt people, or push everyone away. You have no talents and you’re broke. Your life has no potential and you’re just going nowhere.

If you’re watching this the chances are you are so overwhelmed by the feeling of failure that you can’t imagine your life without it: failure is inseparable from who you are. Whatever you invest your time doing you always end up feeling like you’ve underperformed. No amount of achievement, social accomplishments or prestige will ever do the trick.

Well there’s some good news in all of this: turns out you’re not alone. Historically speaking, humans have always messed up their lives. Feelings of failure are inevitable when we don’t achieve what we hoped for: but chronic failure, when you feel your very existence as a human being is a failure, that you are an categorical loser; well, that’s not good and that is a serious issue. Long story short I can tell you categorically that you’re not a loser, and the fact that you believe you are actually certifies you are not. But I know you’ll need more convincing than that so let’s dig a little deeper.
Why is it that some people feel like total losers when those on the outside can see they have potential? And why is a sense of failure so innate in some of us that we define ourselves as losers?

When Oedipus realised that he had killed his father, married his own mother and had several children by her, I can only imagine he had that “I’m failing at life” moment too. I mean, what bigger mess of your life can you make than having a longstanding, loving relationship and family with your own biological parent? There’s no undoing that. Whilst Oedipus, I’m sure, felt like a total loser, we as the audience don’t think of him as such. Greek tragedy was designed to show is that bad things happen to good people; that their downfalls are not always their fault, and as such we shouldn’t correlate failure with a systematic fault within ourselves.

Feeling like a loser is a self-limiting personal paradigm: after a while you’re so convinced that you’ll never amount to anything you just stop trying. This is why I need to now insert important intervention right here! Firstly let’s point out the science: you are not genetically structured to be more of a failure than a winner. There are no such genes. You are you, and hard work will always beat talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

Secondly let’s point out the facts: failure is inevitable and it does not define you. Failure is something that happens to us, it’s not a statement about who we are. Feeling like a loser comes from your own interpretation of who you are, and nothing else is holding you back other than yourself.
You see everyone on social media soaring to fame and success, falling in love, getting married, climbing up the economic and academic ladders whilst you just…don’t do any of that. You see all this and then allow your present to define your future. But I get it: it’s really hard for me or anyone else to convince you of how incredible your potential is.

Humans are hardwired into their belief systems, including those about the self. It may take you a long time to let go of your identity as a loser, but for now please just remember this: everything you are not makes you everything you are. Most people are not born into a world where they have it all, and just because they’re not there yet, or they’ve fallen down a few times, doesn’t make them losers. Life isn’t a game that you are trying to win at, it’s an exploration. The people around you are not your competition, they are not superior to you and you are not inferior to them, they’re just people doing their thing. You need to start focussing on just doing yours.

In life we write our own stories as we go along, life isn’t prescripted and whilst it may throw some curveballs your way, your response to them is what makes your story. When failure comes, don’t succumb and close the book. React, write the next chapter. What people do with their failures is how they develop as individuals. Failure isn’t the opposite of success; it’s part of success. When a toddler is learning to walk it falls down several hundred times, and never once does it think to itself: ‘I really don’t think this walking thing’s for me.’

Your weight, grades, shyness, nerdiness, geekiness, relationship status, job or appearance doesn’t make you a loser. Rejections are painful, but they’re also not indications that you are a loser. Oh, and guess what? Having a mental illness or disability doesn’t make you a loser either. You’re not faulty, you’re not inadequate. If there are things you’re unhappy with, take baby steps to changing in the way that will make you feel happier. Emphasis on you here. You know all those external opinions and standards? Just, you know, push them, no, throw them off the cliff. Just throw them. Only your standards matter when it comes to your mental wellbeing and happiness. So don’t stop trying, don’t be afraid of failure. Failure isn’t personal. Failure is just like flipping a pancake in a frying pan. 8/10 times your pancake will land folded; so you have to shimmy it around in the pan for it to be flat again before having another go. No matter how many times you flip, you’re always going to get a few folded pancakes; flipping is nerve wracking, and sometimes it lands on the floor but you keep trying because…you want to eat pancakes. And if you want something, you have to keep trying for it. Pancakes don’t flip themselves.

If you like what we’re doing on this channel you should subscribe and consider joining the Rebelleon on our website, fearlessly.co.uk, an online magazine which encourages readers and writers to explore issues about mental health issues through creativity. Everything mentioned is linked down below and until next time, positive vibes from Fearless Femme.”

Cinzia is a passionate bibliophage, writer and literary researcher from Scotland whose socially awkward mannerisms can be attributed to bibliophilic nurturing.

She studied her Masters in Literature at the University of Edinburgh, and her BA in Classics and Literature at the University of Birmingham. She produces her own podcasts, videos and writing essays. Oh, and she reads a lot, obviously. But that would be like adding at the end ‘she also spends a lot of her free time breathing.’