Should you keep blaming the pandemic for your failure?

For us to face the crisis altogether, maybe it is easier to feel compassionate towards other and be able to understand struggle, as we also go through the hardship ourselves too. But when they say “Misery love company”, it’s not incorrect. Being a bit more critical about myself, I think that I spent way too much time complaining about what I have been through, and most of the time, the response is of course, accommodating, but it doesn’t really offer the change that I need. Sometimes it’s hard to seek a way out if you keep staring at the wall that has fallen upon you, and you keep whining about what happened rather than trying to get out of the crumble yourself or at least ask for help to be pulled out of the mess. You ended up being stuck and keep wondering whether you would ever be released again.

So instead of blaming the crisis to happen, collect yourself and pull up.

Here is an alternative to-do list for those who had failed at something during the pandemic (or any hardship, really), instead of whining:

1. Cry out loud and finish your whining. Acknowledging that you fail. If you feel like crying, it’s ok. It’s ok to have emotions. Crying is stress relief, so allow yourself to shed tears. You need to learn how painful it is to fail. Be in the moment for a while. Live the pain. Done? Great. Remember, what you do next is more important.
2. It’s ok to feel defeated, but it is NOT ok if you remain defeated. If you fail, the battle is not won. It’s your choice to continue or drop, but if it’s very important to you, DON’T give up.
3. Analyse the reason why you fail. This is crucial, because knowing the causes for failure would reduce the chance that failure being repeated in the future. Did you hard work on a big gathering event get canceled because of the pandemic? Great, you should think it as a success that you have reduced the health risk for others in the time of uncertainty. Did you lose funding source for a project during the pandemic because of mismanagement? This is questionable because the cause of failure might be internal, so if you can recognize how things were not right and it happened at the same time with the pandemic, you might be better separate the two factors and identify the one that you can work on next time.
4. Work with remaining, available resources. Because when we fail, we are not only failing to achieve the result, but also fail to use the resources that we had to its full potential. However, if you think about it, everyone on Earth have exact one fair available resource, which is TIME. If you have nothing to lose, the thing that you still have is TIME. If you have time, you have everything. The value of time is non-debatable in my perspective, but I would like to have another section talking about it later.
5. Get help. Ask for help. If they don’t have time, get help from somewhere else. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s harder to do than say, but if you try to do everything by yourself, it might be the fastest way to guarantee that you are going to fail again. You might learn, but consider the value of time, you can get helps from someone with higher expertise to do the things you are not good at at a higher speed.
6. Help others. This is not really because you have an obligation to those who helped you, but being able to help other would mean that you are helping yourself at collaborating with others and deliver your service better. Help others whenever you feel like it, and best, whenever you can. You might not be good at something, but for sure you can find things that your time and efforts can be put in place to benefit others as well. If you choose to help others, be a giver.
7. Knowing that risks would always be present. Things happen, and things can get worse than the present: by accident or by mistakes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do what you want to do. The more you experience, the more unpleasant life can get, but also the more you learn to enjoy that discomfort. We don’t want to gamble, but sometimes luck get in the way and it’s the thing that might determine our fate. But keep having trust, and be hopeful. After all the bigger risk you take, the better reward it would be once you succeed. So if you believe in your goal and destination, there should be way to achieve it.
8. Trust your guts. You are stronger than you think you are. You are more resilient that you think you are. It can be hard to put in perspectives sometimes, especially when you are all alone in the dark, but if you keep searching for the source of light that you need, you will find it eventually. Keep finding your true calling, and don’t be afraid if you make mistake. Mistakes would help you get closer to clarity, and it would be rather benevolent in the long term, once you take a look back at it.
9. Take actions. After analyzing, fixing perspectives and aligning yourself with new objectives, it’s time to build a new action plan, and mobilize the energy to work toward it. Nothing is changed if you stopped at step 8. We can keep talking about our problems, be reflective, and be educated, but we would only merely change the court of the outcome. Unless we put real physical, visible and tangible work into the process, you would not progress. So take action is important. DO whatever necessary to push through the designated frameworks to get the new result that you desire for.

Bonus: We often praise soft skills to be important in the 21st century, but is it Enough to succeed? It’s depends on your professional categories, but I believe that soft skills are just secondary to technical skills: the skills that enable you to handle unique set of difficulties, the skills that are needed to perform specific tasks. If you have a well rounded combination of soft and technical skills, you would be more likely to succeed.

Thank you for your patient reading. If you have any further comment or feedback, please comment below and I would love to hear what you think, what are you working on to better yourself.