Resilience Strategies—Reframing Past Regrets

One of my personal favorite resilience strategies to use for small failures or mistakes is to remind myself that “failure is an event, not a person.” We’ve already established that we tend to beat ourselves up when we fail. In many cases, we take it a step further and spiral the failure down to an endless abyss—kind of like Dante’s inferno—where not only do we beat ourselves up, we see our mishap as an end to civilization as we know it. I have watched students in my office spiral down from a mediocre grade on an exam, to never graduating from college, to never finding a job, to spending the rest of their life living in their parents’ basement. A bit dramatic? Yes. Have I done it? Yes. And I watch my students do it too. This strategy helps you reframe and see the failure as the event which it is, instead of a measure of your self-worth. The failure is one event; it does not make you, the person, a failure.

Instead of acknowledging that the failure was only a misstep in a long, life journey, what happens all too frequently is that we let the failure loom large and spiral out of control. My knee-jerk reaction is that I’m a failure. No good. Done for. Game over. Note the emphasis is on me—as if this one mistake reflects a gaping character flaw. It’s not my behavior that I’m questioning. I’m doubting that I’m good enough. My first thought is “I’m a failure.” And the subsequent thoughts spiral downward after that.

We need to rethink the “I am a failure.” Instead of allowing the mistake to imply a character flaw (I’m a failure), reframe the failure as an event. Upon reflection, I fear I said something stupid in a meeting. Note the role that fear plays here. In reality, do I know for sure that other faculty in the meeting thought I made a stupid comment? No. Yet, upon reflection, I assume and fear (probably irrationally) that everyone thought my comment was stupid, and I am stupid, and I start beating myself up. Will I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? The answer is probably no and I’m glad. We need to keep speaking up. But I digress. Darn. It’s OK to swear and/or be disappointed. But remind yourself, I am still smart, I am still kind, I am still compassionate, and I am a good faculty member. I made a comment that maybe I shouldn’t have said. Now move on.

I would use a similar approach to disciplining my young daughters—and to be clear, I’m talking about my good days when I had my act together. Trust me, there were many not-so-good days as a mother when I disciplined out of frustration, impatience, or lack of energy. We’re not going there today. But when my patience and self-control were intact, and my daughters misbehaved, my loving (and best) response was “I love you very much, but your behavior is unacceptable.” I made a clear separation from themselves and their behavior. They were still good people. Always have been, always will be. But their behavior was unacceptable. I’m hoping you had similar discipline as well.

Let me give you an example of how the I-failed-so–I’m-a-failure typically plays out in my office. A student came into my office distraught because they got a B+ on an exam. Not an A. They weren’t perfect. They were so fixated on the B+, which they considered a failure, that they extrapolated that one grade into a life destruction. It is as if the B+, one grade, would cause them to flunk the course, which means they flunk out of college, which means they will never get a job, and thus, live on couch in their parents’ basement forever. And as teachers can attest, I’m not exaggerating. Conversations like this one go on daily in professor’s offices. One misstep can get totally blown out of proportion. Instead, I remind the student that they are smart, they are a good marketing student, and they will get a job. They just didn’t perform as well on the exam as they would have liked. Forgive yourself and move forward. True, they might study more or study differently to score higher on the next exam, but the most important thing is to stop wasting precious cognitive and emotional energy brooding over a past mistake. Instead of ruminating, use the resources to be productive and move forward.

The hardest thing about teaching resilience is practicing what I teach. You teach what you need to learn, and resilience is no exception. In the early days of COVID, I was required to send multiple messages to students through various channels about the location of the class and COVID protocol adjustments. I dutifully crafted all of the documents, but, unbeknown to me, in one message, I made a typo with the wrong classroom number. Several minutes into the first day of class—the most important day of the semester—a handful of students apologetically arrived late. Turns out they read the memo with the wrong classroom number and were wandering around the building looking for the classroom. I felt terrible. I know how important it is to be on time for class (if you’re 10 minutes early you’re on time, if you’re on time, you’re late, and if you’re late, you’re fired) and I felt embarrassed for the students. And I felt even worse when I realized it was my fault they were late. This is why your English teacher told you to always proofread!!!! Regardless, these students got off to a less than great start to class and it was my fault. And I call myself a good teacher? Before learning about resilience, I would have beaten myself up and continually berated myself for making a stupid mistake that impacted people I care about: my students. Furthermore, the students had to enlist the help of another professor—a known misogynist—to find the correct classroom. Yikes. Now it will be all over campus that I can’t even get a classroom number right and how will that look when I come up for promotion? The downward spiral had begun.

However, I needed to practice resilience. I told myself “I am a good teacher. I care about my students. And regardless of COIVD, I am going to make sure my students have the best semester ever.” And I did. Reminding myself that my failure, a typo (don’t forget—I’m a recovering perfectionist so a typo is a big deal) was an event, not a reflection on my teaching ability, enabled me to move on and focus on other things. And I bet none of the late students ever remember the incident that I was so ready to beat myself up for. And the story gets better. If you want to read how I responded to the misogynistic colleague when he crowed about rescuing me from my mistake, skip to the section on sorry. When he joyfully confronted me with my mistake and how he saved the day and rescued my students from wandering endlessly looking for the classroom, I smiled, thanked him, and went on my way. No apology needed. He felt good and I didn’t give away my power. Great ending to the story.

I find “failure is an event, not a person” convenient to use for small failures, setbacks, or mistakes. The fact that I have memorized it gives you an indication of how frequently I use it.