 Failing sucks. Not only does it bruise the ego, but it also makes you start over and has the potential to hurt your feelings and re-evaluate the path that you are on. Sincerely, no one likes to fail, but failing is a part of the game that is life. As author and founder of Business Network in South Africa, Carl Smith puts it, Everyone falls flat on their face now and again, but with some simple ways to pick yourself up, the trick is to learn lessons and make a few changes. In this video, I will share with you 9 steps to take you to start life again after failure. 1. Accept responsibility for what happened. The first thing you should do after you have failed is to accept it and come to terms with it. Don't ignore it, deny or hide it. Trying to ignore or deny the fact that you have encountered failure does not in any way reverse the situation. It only makes your bouncing back more challenging to occur. Understand that failure is an event that happens all the time and accepting that you fail does not make you a failure. Although when it comes to failing, our egos are our own worst enemies. It never wants us to accept the fact that we are responsible for our failures. Passing the buck, however, is a sure recipe for disaster. Thus, you must endeavor never to blame others and hold them responsible for your failures. Indeed, instead, be accountable for your actions, choices and decisions. In the words of a life coach at Huck Life, Angel Shurnoff, your mistakes and failures should be your motivation, not your excuse. Owning your failure is the first step to rising from it. 2. Analyze the situation. Even though you cannot undo what happened by taking stock of the experience, you can objectively assess and gain insight into what went wrong, how and where. Analyzing also helps you in revising your vision and strategy, preparing yourself, working on your weak points and improving your future performance. When you revisit your concept, you will be focused on the most logical steps to take and build relationships with the right kind of people you will need to realize it. Stephen Covey once wrote, All things are created twice. There is a mental or first creation and a physical or second creation to all things. Analyzing the situation after a setback will enable you to understand what worked and what did not, thus giving you a second chance to making things work. With the knowledge gotten from your analysis, you can begin with a whole new approach. Through an in-depth analysis, your self-confidence to bounce back is greatly enhanced and you can start living more confidently. 3. Pick out lessons from experience. Life coach Angel Shurnoff on one occasion rented a piece of advice as regards bouncing back. She said, Place your mistakes under your feet and use them as stepping stones. Mistakes teach you important lessons and every time you make one, you're one step closer to your goal. This assertion by Angel Shurnoff very well matched the words of Henry Ford when he said that the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. Failure teaches you like none others can teach you. It will help if you learn from your mistake and heed the lessons of failure. As Bill Gates puts it, make the best of your mistakes, use your blunders as teaching moments and craft a brand new game plan using what you learned. Embrace them, learn from them and never repeat them. Identify your weaknesses, work on them and turn them into your strength. 4. Separate yourself from your failures. Your failure isn't your identity. Just because you haven't found the right thread does not mean you have to wear the F label on your shirt. The fact that you did not get something right at the first attempt should not make you think lowly of yourself. The worst way to deal with failure is to take it to heart. Personalizing failure would only cheap away at your self-esteem. Because you'll think there's something about you that makes you fail when in reality it's not about you. The fact remains that as long as an event has taken place it cannot be undone. Complaining, salking and self-pity will never right the wrongs that have transpired. Thus, you ought to stop ruminating over it, rerunning it in your mind and feeling sorry for yourself. Separate yourself from the failure you have encountered else you will not be able to get back on your feet again. 5. Develop mental toughness to break from the past. It can feel indiscreet to salk after a failure. But instead of spiraling to a pity party, getting more enthusiasm from your goal is a better deal. Although freeing yourself from the shame and hurt of the past may be a challenging thing to do, it is what you should do if you ever wanted to stand on your feet again. To make your mind set to become more resilient you must continually tell yourself I might not be able to go according to plan but it's okay because things change. Setbacks should not dishearten or break you. Failure is not an end in itself so you must never let it steal your confidence. Train yourself to take bad hits in life. Change your mindset about failure because the quicker you can deal with failure the quicker you are ready for success. 6. Build a positive mindset. Failure brings with it a dark cloud of negativity. You begin to question yourself and start to doubt your ability. Positive thoughts are the last thing on your mind but they are what you need to get back standing. Recovery and rebounding. Take time. To facilitate and make the process faster you must fight all negative thoughts that cross your mind and fill yourself with positivity. To build a positive mindframe look at failure more as a learning experience and less as rejection. The more you change your perception the more you'll find yourself experience more positive emotions than negative. Also look back and reflect in your own life how you faced past failures and overcame them. Nothing can inspire you more than your personal experience and your own success story because those experiences assure you that you have dealt with it before and can do it again. In the words of Winston Churchill success is moving from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. 7. Counterattack fear. When you face defeat you are engulfed by fear and self-doubt. Feeling bad and beaten up after a failure is a normal emotion that surfaces after a setback. However you shouldn't let yourself think broken for too long else the fear lingers and you will not be able to move forward. Rather than allow the fear to grow face it and fight it. One of the most effective methods of fighting the fear of failure is countering it with the joy of success. Even amid your pains and failures you can let yourself feel happy. Think of all the times in the past when you have succeeded as well as how it would look like if you succeed in your next task. Open up your heart to feel the rush of emotion that comes along with those thoughts about success. The intense feeling of happiness and fulfillment that comes along with being successful often overpowers the fear so that the only emotion you feel is faith and accomplishment. 8. Focus and perform better. Everyone faces failure but how you look at it and what you do about it is what makes all the difference. Although failure can also be because he's just plain unlucky many times it happens because a person wasn't able to prepare well, didn't plan properly or was ill equipped. Failure shouldn't stop you from trying out something new. Instead it should make you stronger and better prepared for new projects. When you disregard the last failure you can fix yourself to do better next time. So please make a list of all the things which you think contributed to your failure and start working on them. One thing at a time. Everything within your power to rectify, resolve, improve, develop and put right. Once you've recovered you are better equipped to chase after more dreams and more secure in knowing that you've once survived a failure. 9. Launch again. One thing that failure does if you let it is that it cripples the fate you have on your abilities. Over time failure has been said not to be the opposite of success but the opposite of making attempts. Successful individuals are those who continue to try even after failing whereas unsuccessful individuals give up on themselves after a setback. In the words of American author and former dot-com executive Seth Gordon the only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something. Don't let your failed projects and work consume you. Get back up and try again. In the words of South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and former president Nelson Mandela the greatest glory in living lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall. Imagine if Harry Potter author JK Rowling hadn't pulled through and persisted with her vision. Consider if Thomas Edison relented in his quest. Would there have ever been Harry Potter the best-seller book in movie or the invention of the light bulb? Someone somewhere is hoping that your persistence will make their lives better.