Recently, I have been reflecting on my life and thinking about my childhood and early years and how it impacted me as an adult. For most of my life, I had a lacklustre psychological resilience and low tolerance to failure, which caused a lot of mental pain and significantly slowed me down in my quest for a better life. That lack of challenge developed my inability to handle stress and uncertainty. The worst part is that I did not realize I had such a deficiency until later in life. This flaw stayed dormant for years. Fostering and cultivating these qualities early in life is vital for any highly functional human being.
By chance, some people are more resilient due to the environment they were surrounded by as kids. I remember how my parents used to tell me that when they were kids, they had to walk 5 kilometres twice a day to get to school, even in the middle of winter. In addition to their schoolwork, they had to do daily chores on the family farm. They had limited access to books and materials and had to rely on themselves for everything because their parents had no formal education. By all means, life was tough. In contrast, most kids today grow up surrounded by comfort and convenience. We need to challenge our kids more. Instead, we spoon-feed them.
Take me, for example. Growing up, I was on top of my class in almost everything due to a natural predisposition. I won the DNA lottery of sorts, and most of the things were relatively easy for me. I had little to no struggle going through the school program. I did a minimum amount of studying and was good at following instructions. I was competent at most things without putting in any meaningful effort. Life was easy, for the most part.
On top of that, my home country’s educational system did not promote creativity or proactive behaviours. You get lectured, you memorize, you read and comprehend. No one ever asks you to come up with new ideas and do something independently. Creativity and critical thinking are not encouraged. There are no team projects, as collaboration is frequently not incentivized but punished. No one pushes the student to leave their comfort zone and stretch themselves.
I had no serious hobbies or extra classes, apart from an obsession with video games, which is typical for boys of that age. So, I was coasting through life in my childhood and youth years. My parents, unfortunately, did not demand anything from me except for bringing home good marks from school. As I mentioned, they had a tough childhood. Why would they want their kids to struggle and do anything extra? To them, success at school was a primary measure of my well-being and development. And honestly, I did not bother myself. I made a few attempts at sports, but the second it stopped being fun, I’d stop pursuing it. Those extra activities usually lasted for a couple of months.
Fast-forwarding to my early adulthood, I struggled to overcome difficulties more and more. Since I was never really challenged or stretched enough, my “failure muscle” was not trained sufficiently to handle the everyday challenges of life. Take job-seeking, for example.
In my professional area, interviewing is a separate discipline that you have to be good at if you want to have a chance to be employed by the best companies. You have to be able to solve a specific set of problems and many other variations of those problems in the best possible way within the time limits. You must prepare vigorously to be good at interviews as a software engineer. The trick is that you are going to fail. If you do it right, you will stumble frequently and a lot. I struggled to maintain consistency to improve my skills. The day I’d try to learn a new approach or problem, I’d naturally fail at first. That would cause me a great deal of emotional pain. I’d feel like a fraud. Weeks and months would pass, and the inability to make progress was all-succumbing. I’d wake every morning feeling like I was a failure. However, I lived a decent lifestyle, and my family had everything they needed. The temporary setback set the tone for my whole life, and that’s precisely what you do not want. If I had experienced enough failure and trained myself to overcome obstacles, I’d have handled it better without damaging my mental state.
Another aspect of my life that was impacted by this is goal setting. I believe in goal-setting as a tool to achieve more remarkable results in life and navigate your way through it. As my failure tolerance was weak, It was hard to digest my inability to meet some of my goals. And let’s be honest, most of us will miss some of our goals. But the fact that you are not achieving your goal or late for it should not bring you down. It was not like that for me, though. Every missed goal or opportunity would trigger an avalanche of negative emotions, regret and self-blame in me. I just had no coping strategies for failures and mistakes.
Another common symptom of poorly developed fail-tolerance in people is perfectionism. I believe in obsessing over quality when it’s worth it, but it’s not the same as perfectionism. More often than not, perfectionism damages the overall outcome of the activity. Perfectionists spend countless hours trying to polish a piece of work only because they are afraid to be perceived as someone who fails at their job. They are scared of criticism of not getting it “right”. However, criticism and feedback are essential learning tools. Take me as an example. Because of perfectionism, fear of failure, fear of what others think, it took me multiple years to finally start treating writing seriously. I know I’m not good at writing, I know that I need to write a lot to improve, and I know I need to make it public to push myself. However, I always find an excuse because of my fear of failure. I’d spend hours finding the perfect text editor, domain name, and site-engine or hosting. All of it to avoid moving the needle and to escape the emotional pain.
These days, I become better at dealing with failures. Subconsciously, in the recent years of my life, I took multiple steps to make my life more challenging and demanding, and gradually, I trained myself to tolerate failure. I’ve been living overseas with my family for the last five years. Living a thousand miles away from home is hard, as you must rely on yourself for everything. There is no safety net or support network that you have at home. All the life decisions, from minor to significant, are on you and your partner. It’s a challenging but rewarding learning experience. On top of that, I read a lot, exercise, set fitness goals, and stretch myself at work. As my ability to tolerate hardships grew, my results improved, and I could see a meaningful outcome in crucial areas of my life.
Looking back at my experience and struggles, I teach my kids to be OK with failure and mistakes. Our family generally don’t fuss over a lousy school mark or mediocre sports performance. However, we still demand to be good at things and be accountable for results. It’s OK to make mistakes and fail at something; it’s not OK to be slacking off or erring constantly. We encourage our kids to learn from their mistakes. We encourage them to seek help and be curious about the challenges they might be facing.
Stretching yourself and sometimes failing at your goals is a foundation of resilience and self-sufficiency. Don’t we all love comfort and convenience? However, if you do not overcome the obstacles or do not feel the mental pain, at least at times - you will struggle to achieve the more outstanding outcomes. Do the hard things. Challenge yourself on purpose. Be comfortable with failure.