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We all have failures in life. Some huge, most minor, some inbetween.
Thinking about it, I never contemplate my failures. I don't think about them indepth and never dwell on them.
I'd like to think that I'm an optimist (for the most part lol) and not "dwelling" on my failures is a good thing.
But is it just avoidance? Is it just being afraid to face my weaknesses. Is it being afraid of getting depressed?
For the most part I'm a content person. I'm a live and let live kinda person. I guess you can say I'm much more "easy going" than a lot of people (like my brother or dad).
Is it dysfunctional not to reflect on my failures. Is it healthy? Is it dysfunctional?
Thinking about your failures and recognizing it's part of success is healthy. Ruminating on where you failed isn't very good, and it can bring you down psychologically.
But I guess it's also inevitable that we don't always have the mental capacity to logically reassess bad situations in our life.
I think as I go on in life I get more experienced (or even more successful) at redirecting the way I think about my perceived failures. In the end it's just a part of the learning process.
No, avoidance is if you avoid what you need to do. You're not denying your failures, you're just choosing not to dwell on them. It would be dysfunctional to stay stuck in the past, to let those failures define you. You're more healthy than you think (perhaps more than most people), but I can see how in this day and age you'd feel strange not advertising mental illnesses, feeling entitled, making excuses, etc.
I would think it is avoidance to deny your failures and not learn from them. The ability to acknowledge your failures but then move on from them without dwelling on them, sounds fantastic. I wish I were so lucky. I don't think it is necessarily avoidance, unless you completely deny them and pretend they didn't happen.
You only get to do this after the fact and maybe quite a while after the fact when you are less emotional and more rational about it.
I think of it as telling myself my life's story. Before my Fifties I think it used to go "And then I tried doing this but instead that happened."
It was like I couldn't see much connection between my own thoughts, feelings and behaviors and how they were affecting me. It was more outside forces which were thwarting me. That direction eventually leads to feelings of helplessness and failure.
Now I am more apt to think of former mistakes in terms of, "I did this because of something I wanted" and "here's what happened so I learned X."
I add a scoop of self-forgiveness for being human, a sense of survival and new awareness of tendencies I have to watch and I have made lemonade from lemons. Wash, rinse and repeat. The learning continues.
Over the years I have benefited from a lot of helpful, understanding friends to learn this new way of thinking about myself.
I mention the decade of redirection because, although I understood the concept of having an inner locus of control much earlier in my life, it wasn't until I had gotten sufficient bumps and bruises that the inclination to change occurred.
Then too, there's that issue of unrecognized shame that is a huge roadblock. Until I fully understood the difference between guilt and shame and how it worked in my life it was difficult to make progress,
If I'm honest it's so much easier to blame circumstances and other people for my problems than it is to take a hard look at myself and be willing to readjust. But I looked look at what life remained and how I wanted to live it. In regret or in acceptance? Which would feel the better?
Also, as we age I think some of the things that happened when we are younger seem less emotional and easier to deal with.
We all have failures in life. Some huge, most minor, some inbetween.
Thinking about it, I never contemplate my failures. I don't think about them indepth and never dwell on them.
I'd like to think that I'm an optimist (for the most part lol) and not "dwelling" on my failures is a good thing.
But is it just avoidance? Is it just being afraid to face my weaknesses. Is it being afraid of getting depressed?
For the most part I'm a content person. I'm a live and let live kinda person. I guess you can say I'm much more "easy going" than a lot of people (like my brother or dad).
Is it dysfunctional not to reflect on my failures. Is it healthy? Is it dysfunctional?
Did you learn from them? Do you not do the same thing anymore because you learn from them? If the answer is yes to both, it’s perfectly healthy not to go back and dwell on past failures. Our failures are to teach us some thing. And sometimes what they teach us is people can’t be trusted. Kind of an important lesson to learn.
One of my first jobs out of college Was as the banquet manager at a hotel. I didn’t get any training, I barely knew what I was doing everything was pretty much going without a hitch somehow, and then I got fired.
I found out pretty soon afterwards that the reason I got fired was the new manager Hired the girl he was sleeping with to do my job. Apparently anybody could do this job.
I never think about it anymore because I learned that I couldn’t trust everybody. And sometimes there were things that were beyond my control. And to save a little bit from every job so you aren’t completely skint if you get fired..
Did you learn from them? Do you not do the same thing anymore because you learn from them? If the answer is yes to both, it’s perfectly healthy not to go back and dwell on past failures. Our failures are to teach us some thing. And sometimes what they teach us is people can’t be trusted. Kind of an important lesson to learn.
One of my first jobs out of college Was as the banquet manager at a hotel. I didn’t get any training, I barely knew what I was doing everything was pretty much going without a hitch somehow, and then I got fired.
I found out pretty soon afterwards that the reason I got fired was the new manager Hired the girl he was sleeping with to do my job. Apparently anybody could do this job.
I never think about it anymore because I learned that I couldn’t trust everybody. And sometimes there were things that were beyond my control. And to save a little bit from every job so you aren’t completely skint if you get fired..
I did learn lessons from my mistakes / failures. But a lot of them are regrets from what I did or failed to do in moments of my lifetime.
The classic question of "would you relive your life knowing what you know now"?
I think my answer would be yes. And I would do so many things differently.
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Solly says — Be nice!
