13 Things Mentally Strong People Don\'t Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success pdfdrive com

WHY WE GIVE UP
Susan, like many of us, felt that if she failed once, she’d most certainly fail
again, so she didn’t bother trying. Although she knew something was missing
from her life, it never occurred to her that she could try taking college classes
again because she assumed she just wasn’t “college material.” Susan is certainly
not alone. It’s likely that almost everyone has given up on something after a
failed first attempt.

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Fear is often at the heart of our unwillingness to try something again after
we’ve failed at it already, but not everyone shares the same fears about failure.
One person may worry that he’ll disappoint his parents while another person
may worry that she’s too fragile to handle another setback. Rather than facing
these fears, many people simply avoid risking another failure, which we
associate with shame. Some of us try to hide our failures; others devote a lot of
energy into making excuses for them. A student may say, “I didn’t have time to
study for this test at all,” even though she devoted many hours of her time
preparing, just to cover up the fact that she did poorly. Another student may hide
his test score from his parents because he’s ashamed that he didn’t do well.
In other instances, we allow failure to define who we are. To Susan, her failure
to finish college meant she wasn’t smart enough to get an education. Someone
may believe one failure in business means he was never destined to be an
entrepreneur, or an individual who fails to publish his first book may conclude
he’s a poor writer.
Giving up can also be a learned behavior. Perhaps as a child, your mother
swooped in to help you accomplish any task you weren’t able to do on the first
try. Or maybe when you told your teacher you couldn’t figure out your math
work, she gave you the answers so you never really had to figure it out for
yourself. Always expecting someone else to come to our rescue can be a hard
habit to break, even into adulthood, making it less likely that we’ll be willing to
try again if we fail.
Finally, many people give up because they have a fixed mind-set about their
abilities. They don’t think that they have any control over their level of talent so
they don’t bother improving and trying again after failure. They think if you
weren’t born with a God-given talent to do something, there’s no use in trying to
learn.
THE PROBLEM WITH GIVING IN TO
FAILURE
Susan spent a lot of time thinking things like I’m not smart enough to be a
teacher, and I could never help students succeed because I’m a failure. Those

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types of thoughts kept her from achieving her goals, and it never occurred to her
that she could still go back to college. If you give up like Susan did after your
first failure, you will likely miss out on a lot of opportunities in your life. Failing
can actually be a wonderful experience—but only if you move forward with the
knowledge you gain from it.
It’s difficult to succeed without failing at least once. Take, for example,
Theodor Geisel—also known as Dr. Seuss—whose first book was rejected by
more than twenty publishers. He eventually went on to publish forty-six of the
most well-known children’s books, some of which were turned into television
specials, feature films, and Broadway musicals. Had he given up the first time he
failed to get a publishing deal, the world would never have had the opportunity
to appreciate his unique writing style that has been entertaining children for
decades.
Giving up after the first failure can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Each time you quit, you reinforce the idea that failure is bad, which in turn will
prevent you from trying again; thus your fear of failure inhibits your ability to
learn. In a 1998 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social