Recovering from failure and disappointment

WHAT’S GOING ON?

A wonderful and essential part of childhood is trying new things and learning from experience. When we reach our goals, we feel positive emotions like elation and pride. But trying new things inevitably also involves risk of disappointment and failure, which bring up hard feelings like sadness, anger, and shame.

The problem is that these unpleasant feelings, if not acknowledged and processed, can start to lead to playing it ‘safe’ and avoiding situations that might trigger them – often without even being consciously aware of it. So a child may avoid sports because one coach was critical, or may not raise their hand in class after being embarrassed by a wrong answer. Gradually these choices limit their options and explorations.

Because of the limiting effect disappointment and failure can have, its important to counter it by first acknowledging and processing negative experiences your child has, and then actively encouraging a growth mindset. (Note that jumping straight to platitudes about a growth mindset will not help much, and may create more stress, until the underlying bad feelings are acknowledged.)

A growth mindset, as defined by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, is the belief that one’s skills and abilities are not fixed, but instead will grow with effort and practice. This core belief leads to a very helpful approach to life:

seeking challenges and persisting until you’ve figured it out
learning and doing for it’s own sake, rather than for impressive results
valuing effort as the path to mastery
valuing negative feedback in order to learn
being inspired by the success of others

It turns out that people with growth mindset enjoy work and learning more, are more authentic, and are more resilient in the face of life’s inevitable disappointments and failures.