Strategies for managing success and failure

Being Successful What it means to be successful can vary from person to person. This is because everyone has different values, different beliefs about what it means to be successful.

For example, some students might consider academic or sporting success to be the most important goal to achieve, whereas other students might rank having successful relationships as being more important.

Success and Failure ‘Success’ and ‘failure’ are terms that are used a lot, but their impact on people’s well-being can be relative (ie; it can depend on the situation and the person involved). Everyone has the potential to experience the high feelings of success and the low feelings of failure. Consequently, learning how to manage successes and failures is an important part of maintaining well-being.

For purposes of this Achievement Standard; Success refers to the achievement of a planned goal. Failure refers to non-achievement of a goal.

There is a tendency in Western culture to celebrate success with activities that require spending money like having parties, going out for dinner and buying presents. These activities are fine, but in Health Education, the ways people manage their success needs to be seen as actions that will help maintain well-being, not just one-off events.

Likewise, the way Western culture deals with failure can be quite destructive because people are often put down for their failures or are given unhelpful, clichéd advice like ‘Better luck next time’ or ‘Forget it, move on’. Failure needs to be acknowledged but managed in ways that people can restore their well-being, learn something from the experience, and not be left with only negative feelings about the situation.

Health-enhancing strategies that assist in managing success and failure need to be considered at each of personal, interpersonal and if applicable, societal level.

Personal Managing failure Learn to use positive self-talk to make more rational sense of the situation. Identify the barriers that prevented the goal from being reached either and either reassess the goal or address the barriers and try again. Learn to receive and accept constructive feedback. Learn new personal skills so the tasks can be completed (eg: time management, interpersonal communication)

Managing Success Learn to receive and accept compliments. Use the learning from the achievement of the goal to set further goals and work towards these. Use positive affirmations to acknowledge own achievement.

Interpersonal Managing Failure Another person could ask the adolescent how they could give support to help them manage the non-achievement of their goal (eg teach new skills, help with time management, help reassess the action plan. Be supportive of what the person is trying to achieve but don’t just tell them what to do or try to achieve the goal for them.

Managing Success Acknowledge their success and compliment them on their achievements. Encourage them to set further goals to improve other aspects of their well-being.

Societal Managing Failure Provide opportunities and resources (these need to be specific to the goal – eg provide safe places for young people to meet others or learn new skills). Reflect social values that say it’s ‘ok if a person does not succeed’, but still expect them to try again, perhaps after reassessing the goal.

Managing Success Reflect the sort of values that make it acceptable for young people to be successful and have these values recognised and promoted by society. The practical application of these values could be shown in local newspapers or local/school celebrations.