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Want to Turn Failure Into Progress, and Even Happiness? Research Shows You Just Need to Tell Yourself the Right Stories
Jeff Haden
6–7 minutes

This is a tale of two failures.

The first happened some years ago when I bought Blue Apron stock at $20 a share. Over time, the price kept dropping. At that point, I made a couple of mistakes.

One, I hated the thought of losing money, so I decided I wouldn’t sell until I had made my money back. (I know: stupid.) I also fell prey to what psychologists call the Ostrich Effect, the tendency to avoid dangerous or negative information by closing yourself off from that information, and stopped watching the stock price. (No news may not be good news, but at least no news isn’t bad news.)

When I finally pulled my head out of the sand, the stock was trading at $4 per share. Embarrassing? Absolutely.

But in some ways I’m glad it happened, because learned a lot — especially about myself — from the experience.

Then there was the time I tried and failed to write a novel, and decided I would never try again. I didn’t learn or grow from that experience.

Why? The difference lies mainly in the stories I told, and continue to tell, myself.

When we fail — which we inevitably do as we travel the path to becoming something we are currently not — how we frame that story makes a huge difference. Generally speaking, there are two ways to view a failure:

As something to avoid
As something to learn from

Sound too simplistic? It isn’t.

Write a novel? The story I tell myself is to never try that again. (So much so, just thinking about it makes me feel queasy.)
Blue Apron stock? That’s a growth-oriented story I tell myself, a failure that revealed a behavior I need to embrace. Instead of giving in to the temptation to look away when something isn’t going well, instead be almost hyper-focused on assessing, analyzing, and making the right decisions.

And here’s the thing: research shows seeing failure as something to learn from rather than avoid will not only make you more resilient, it can also make you happier and healthier:

A study published in Journal of Research in Personality found that people who incorporate themes of personal growth into narratives about their failures experience increased well-being, self-compassion, and forgiveness towards others. (Tell yourself you’ll learn from a mistake and not only will you feel better, you’ll be more understanding when other people make mistakes.)
A study published in Journal of Personality found that people who frame failures with personal growth themes tend to experience enhanced well-being and personality development. (See mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow and you’ll feel better about yourself, and your future.)

Research also shows that how stress impacts you — because failure always results in some degree of stress — depends not on level or amount of stress you experience, but on how you perceive that stress.

As psychologist and Stanford professor Kelly McGonigal describes in her 2013 TED Talk, researchers asked 30,000 adults two questions:

“How much stress have you experienced in the past year?”
“Do you believe that stress is harmful for your health?”

Then they tracked the participants over the next eight years to find out who died. The results?

People who said they experienced “a lot of stress” in the previous year had a 43 percent greater risk of dying, but only if they also believed that stress was harmful for their health.
People who said they experienced “a lot of stress” but who did not view stress as harmful to their health were no more likely to die. In fact, they were less likely to die than anyone in the study, including people who said they experienced relatively little to no stress.

According to McGonigal, the researchers estimated that over that eight-year period, 182,000 people didn’t die prematurely due to stress — but from the belief that stress was bad for them.

Other research backs that up. A study published in Journal of Experimental Psychology found that when people view their stress response as helpful — seeing their body’s natural responses to stress, like increased heart and respiration rate, as signals that their body is rising to the challenge — their blood pressure doesn’t rise. As McGonigal says, their physiological profiles resembled what happens in “moments of joy and courage.”

Thinking about stress differently — seeing stress as a good thing — changed how their bodies responded.

As with most things, perspective is everything. How you respond, to anything, makes a huge difference.

And it all starts with the stories you tell yourself.

When you feel nervous or stressed, when your heart rate rises and your breathing quickens, tell yourself a different story. See your body as rising to a challenge: helping you step in, step up, and work through a problem. See stress as a signal that you have the opportunity to make your life better.

The same is true for failure. Failure sucks, but failure is also an opportunity: to learn, to grow, to do things differently next time. See failure as a signal you have the opportunity to improve.

Failing to write a novel is a story I hate to tell, especially to myself, because the story ends with that failure. Losing money on Blue Apron is a story I like to tell, because how I chose to respond is, to me, the best part of the story. (How you respond, to anything, is always a choice.)

Bottom line? Failure isn’t fun.

But failure can provide the spark for positive changes, and can, oddly enough, put you on a path to greater success and happiness.

As long as you tell yourself the right story.