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Failure is an inevitable part of life at every age. From a baby who falls many times while trying to walk to an older adult who may fail when trying new things, it’s simply inescapable. During the formative teenage years, failing can set off a firestorm of negative emotions. However, failure need not make a victim out of a teen, and it won’t define them as long as they learn how to thrive in the aftermath of their failures. Show them how to see opportunities that may be just around the bend no matter how difficult the present moment may be.

Inspire Them to Work Harder

Show teenagers how they have the power to be in control of their lives before, during, and after failure. When he discovered that he failed nine times out of ten, George Bernard Shaw said that he was compelled to do ten times more work. Help teenagers develop a strong work ethic as one of the best ways to cope with failure. For example, writers learn that rejection is inevitable, so they send many query letters for the same project because they realise that putting in a lot of work towards a single goal is necessary to achieve publication. Similarly, teenagers can apply the same principle towards whatever they set their sights on.

Show The Lessons Failure Teaches

Every failure offers up a plethora of lessons. It’s said that success is simply getting up more often than you trip up and fall. That’s a logical truth, but sometimes it’s more complicated. Here are some of the lessons that you can teach teenagers about failure:

• Examine the motivation behind one’s actions that led to the failure. If a teenager is doing things for the right reasons, it’s easier to avoid true failure in the future. For example, if a teenager enters a sporting event simply for a trophy, it will be a failure if they lose the trophy. However, if the teenager is entering the competition as motivation to get better at that sport and for their own education, then it will be a success as long as they learn along the way.
• Owning one’s responsibility in the failure is worth its weight in gold. Many people are quick to blame the blame game in the face of failure. However, a teenager will no longer be a victim of the failure if they are able to admit what they did wrong. This can be important during exam season when maybe the teenager didn’t do sufficient revision, so they lost out when sitting the exam. If they are able to assess their own mistakes and take responsibility for them, they can avoid making the same mistakes when given opportunities in the future.

Point to Role Models

People are creatures who thrive when they have leaders and role models. If you want to showcase successful people who have coped with failure, look to the most renowned people in business, politics, and show business. Recently, Beyonce released an album and special with a title that references the importance of making lemonade when life offers up only sour lemons. In the not-so-long ago past, Walt Disney went bankrupt at 22 after the failure of a cartoon series of his, and he had many other failures before achieving astronomical success. Talk to teenagers about how many of the most successful people in the world became that way by looking at the things failure had to teach them and continuing on.

Finally, it’s important to help teenagers learn both acceptance and how to accentuate the positive in the face of failure. That will enable them to do well in spite of life’s inevitable setbacks.