What to do when you fail and your day looks like a bad dream

Have you ever had a day when after closing the door to your office you felt good? Or you had a meeting and after you have spoken, you felt great, reaction from people was good, you had couple of laughs and the way you felt was great? Or let’s say you had a really tough week, you were testing some really hard update and were wondering if the upgrade would go smoothly, and on the very day of the upgrade at night, when things could go wrong for tiny bit, you were sweating and doing the upgrade, hoping that all will be fine…. until you reached a point when yes, upgrade went great and you feel just awesome, because you put a lot of effort in to your project and you made it.

About the feeling

Boy, how I love that feeling, it’s divine. I love it, I love it. Usually is the result of your hard work, experiences, environment…But there is another side of that story, the dark side. Just like there is this good feeling, there is also a bad feeling. Usually it comes when you do something wrong, after arguing with people, if you are stuck in a company where you don’t have synergies anymore, when boss humiliates you, when you know you are more capable than the work you do, money problems….or it just… comes. And you feel bad for the whole day.

I still remember second month in one of the job’s I had. CFO approached me and gave me a task that was not really related in line with my work, unfortunately I had to communicate with a person from the company I knew – zip, nada, nothing. So after this guy explained that they don’t provide service our CFO wanted, I wen’t to see CFO. Hello mr. CFO, contact you gave me from company X, said they don’t provide this service and they never provided us with the service. Then he started yelling bladsdsdsd, xxxyzdsds, !@$$#$$#&&***, ___)@(#*!!!!!! and the last sentence was: Why do we have you here for? I felt bad, very bad in fact. For a long time. Now, I won’t dig in to his personality and whether this was ok for him to do. What matters is how I felt.

There comes a day or two when I doubt my self. Is this job right for me? Am I doing the right thing? Am I developing the skills that I wan’t? Am I a good contributor to the company that gives me salary? There could also come a day that I make a mistake. Maybe MS Exchange would fall for 30 minutes because of the error I caused. Maybe CIO will call me to his office and told me that I am no longer required – either because of cost reduction or my fault. It does not matter.

Let’s take a look at some real examples where you could feel like a failure. You get fired. Or you realised that work you did for the past 10 years is all for nothing and that you are stuck in the same place with same experiences and you did nothing to improve that. You are humiliated in front of your mates on a meeting, or you have to close down your business. Then you may say, damn I am real failure. What have I done in my life, only failures.

Good and bad

We all have bad days, we all have good days and we live with that. The difference is how we handle situation. What you need to know that this normal. We all have failed in our life in some situations. Some more, some less.

You have to be aware of environment and people that surround you. Some may have bad effect if that is the case you have to make a change.

I would say that you have to be aware of your life, your dream. Your passion. Are you passionate about your life? About the work you do? Do you have a hobby you really care?

You have to nurture your passion like a mother and you have to protect it like a father. Where is divine feeling without a sweat, without the effort you put in to work that creates great result? Another thing to note is also that when you live your life, you will get results.