Failing in Relationships, Business and Academics are just temporary, don't make it parmenent!
Four months after graduating college among the top of my class, I failed.
I moved to Vancouver to be with my boyfriend and travel somewhere. I tried to be Lululemon’s Senior Director of Marketing, but somehow that didn’t work out. So I wound up a legal secretary—a job that was, for me, unfulfilling and unrelated to my passions.
It got worse. I scrambled to sidestep my situation and applied to several top tier PhD programs. I didn’t get in to any. I’d been so promising.
After nine months in Canada, I moved back home and flunked my seven-year relationship.
Nietzsche claimed—now a cliché—that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And that year did yield some good: if I hadn’t experienced it, I couldn’t empathize with my millennial readers; I might not have even begun writing for them. But overall it was a failure on all fronts. My soggy year in Vancouver was the embodiment of when it rains, it pours.
I’ve since learned I wasn’t alone. In fact, not only is this kind of failure spiral common, it’s biological.
When animals, be them tadpole or human, win at something, their brains release testosterone and dopamine. With time and repetition, this signal morphs the brain’s structure and chemical configuration to make successful animals smarter, better trained, more confident and more likely to succeed in the future. Biologists call it the Winner Effect.
The not-yet-named Loser Effect is equally cyclical: contrary to Nietzsche’s adage, what doesn’t kill you often makes you weaker. In one study, monkeys who made a mistake in a trial—even after mastering the task on par with other monkeys—later performed worse than monkeys who made no mistakes. “In other words,” explains Scientific American, they were “thrown off by mistakes instead of learning from them.” Some research similarly suggests that failure can impede concentration, thereby sabotaging future performance. Students arbitrarily told they failed compared to their peers later displayed worse reading comprehension.
Finally, when we fail once, we’re more likely to fail again at the same goal—and sometimes more catastrophically. In one study, dieters fed pizza and convinced they’d “ruined” their daily diet goal ate 50% more cookies immediately afterward than those not on diets at all. When we fall short of our goals once, our brains say “Abandon ship!”
Four months after graduating college among the top of my class, I failed.
I moved to Vancouver to be with my boyfriend and travel somewhere. I tried to be Lululemon’s Senior Director of Marketing, but somehow that didn’t work out. So I wound up a legal secretary—a job that was, for me, unfulfilling and unrelated to my passions.
It got worse. I scrambled to sidestep my situation and applied to several top tier PhD programs. I didn’t get in to any. I’d been so promising.
After nine months in Canada, I moved back home and flunked my seven-year relationship.
Nietzsche claimed—now a cliché—that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And that year did yield some good: if I hadn’t experienced it, I couldn’t empathize with my millennial readers; I might not have even begun writing for them. But overall it was a failure on all fronts. My soggy year in Vancouver was the embodiment of when it rains, it pours.
I’ve since learned I wasn’t alone. In fact, not only is this kind of failure spiral common, it’s biological.
When animals, be them tadpole or human, win at something, their brains release testosterone and dopamine. With time and repetition, this signal morphs the brain’s structure and chemical configuration to make successful animals smarter, better trained, more confident and more likely to succeed in the future. Biologists call it the Winner Effect.
The not-yet-named Loser Effect is equally cyclical: contrary to Nietzsche’s adage, what doesn’t kill you often makes you weaker. In one study, monkeys who made a mistake in a trial—even after mastering the task on par with other monkeys—later performed worse than monkeys who made no mistakes. “In other words,” explains Scientific American, they were “thrown off by mistakes instead of learning from them.” Some research similarly suggests that failure can impede concentration, thereby sabotaging future performance. Students arbitrarily told they failed compared to their peers later displayed worse reading comprehension.
Finally, when we fail once, we’re more likely to fail again at the same goal—and sometimes more catastrophically. In one study, dieters fed pizza and convinced they’d “ruined” their daily diet goal ate 50% more cookies immediately afterward than those not on diets at all. When we fall short of our goals once, our brains say “Abandon ship!”
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