In contrast with what people say, I still believe that failure is not false evidence appearing real. It just cannot be that. When we were growing up and we were always scared of that ojuju calabar, it appeared so real to us that no matter how we would be beaten, sending us around 8 pm to a dark place becomes impossible. In this case, could it be a false evidence appearing real? I doubt.
If one ojuju never caught someone before, our childhood imaginations would never have been so wild to have made us slaves to the world of the unseen.
How about an intelligent student who continues to fail jamb? The sixth time he wrote jamb he didn’t read because he already expected himself to fail. In this case, failure, like Matthew Femi-Adedoyin would say is, former experience attacking reality.
Most often, we fail because we just cannot control our emotions. Maybe you didn’t do well last year but last year ended last year so why did you have to bring last year to this year?
As a result of uncontrolled emotions resulting from failure, people develop a common disorder psychologists have labeled as ‘learned helplessness.’
The Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology defines learned helplessness “as a mental state in which exposure to inescapable shock or other aversive stimuli has produced a lack of effort and motivation so that the animal fails to learn new responses even when they are available.”
However, it doesn’t end there. There’s also better options we all can embrace after we experience a major set back – learned optimism. Since optimism is the first step to all tremendous achievements, we should embrace it. Failure is not final, it teaches us what success will never be patient to teach us. As T. D. Jakes a set back is a step up for a come back.
Attached to this piece is a book by Psychology Martin Seligman, titled Learned Optimism. Upon request it would be sent to you. But starting out with these NLP questions would make you see failure as a stepping stone to success.
Think of something you ‘failed’ at and ask yourself:
✓ What am I aiming to achieve?
✓ What have I achieved so far?
✓ What feedback have I had?
✓ What lessons have I learned?
✓ How can I put the lessons to positive use?
✓ How am I going to measure my success?
Then pick yourself up and have another go!
I Am Emmanuel Uti
#PsychologistOfChange
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