Jul 28

Fulfillment in Self-Mastery

When Setbacks Become Breakthroughs

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When we pour our hearts into something—whether it is an intention, an opportunity, or a goal—only to see it fall through or wait anxiously for an outcome, the most overwhelming feeling is the fear of failure or the reality of that fear coming true. The question is whether it truly is a fear of failure itself or the fear of what it says about us. Going down this train of thought can be paralyzing because failure is not just an outcome; it feels personal.

  A missed opportunity, a rejection, an idea that did not take off, each one chips away at our confidence because we tie success to self-worth. But what if failure was not a verdict on who you are but a tool for who you are becoming?
 
 Reframing how we see failure starts with making space for the emotions it brings and allowing ourselves to process them. Instead of taking failure at face value, it could help to define what it means for us personally, because just as success looks different for everyone, so does failure. Ignoring this part of the process only makes setbacks feel larger than life, casting longer shadows over our confidence.

  The key is to recognize that failure is something that happens, not something that defines who we are. Many factors shape how we experience failure: high expectations, social pressures, and the tendency to compare ourselves to others (comparison kills the cat!). These can cloud our perspective and make it harder to get back up. But by understanding these influences, we can reorient ourselves, learn from the experience, and move forward with clarity and resilience.
 
  The feeling of not being able to achieve or reach the destination we wanted can make us feel unfulfilled and unsatisfied, but it is in seeing how far we have come that we can take the next step forward. The act of moving or ‘failing forward’ (Maxwell, 2000) is one of resilience and of taking those setbacks not as the end of the world, but as a chance to reinvent ourselves and look at it as an opportunity for growth instead.

  Growth toward self-mastery enables you to be as sure-footed as a mountain goat, even and especially in the face of failure. The steps to do this would look something like this: Retrace, Relearn and Realize, where one would retrace one’s choices and actions, and reassess the factors contributing to failure in order to strategically continue on the path to realizing one’s goals.

Retracing Your Steps

  Once an adequate amount of time has passed and we have processed our emotions, it is the right time to get back in touch with our inherent sense of agency and resourcefulness. Part of retracing your steps is accessing your courage to review a painful moment you would much rather forget and tap into our capacity to keep striving.

  The other important part of this step is to investigate the moments of self-doubt themselves and look at how they affect our abilities to show up, and do our best in enjoying the process. Were the feelings of uncertainty already present, did they come after the official results or later in comparison to something or someone else?

   Let us take the last factor as an example: social comparison can make failure feel more personal than it is and it plays with our perception of time in relation to failure. Leon Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory (1954) explains how we assess ourselves based on others' achievements, and it is often unfair. But what if we compared ourselves only to our past versions? How can you measure your growth in a way that serves you rather than depletes you?

Relearning What Failure Means

  Having retraced our steps, we can reassess the effect of our mindset, attitude, and approach on the events that led us to experience failure, and intentionally challenge and relearn our assumptions that guide our experiences. By doing this we move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, a concept coined by Caroline Dweck, suggesting that by viewing our experiences (even those of failure) as an opportunity to grow, we can enhance our capabilities and capacity through intention, effort, and action. This means that setbacks are not reflections of our worth but stepping stones for progress. It causes us to wonder: What if this failure wasn’t the end but a redirection?

  Cultivating the ability to move beyond the negativity of failure is part of redefining the way we not only view failure (in its destructive capacity) but what we can do with it productively. Failure does not mean stagnation, instead it can be a pivotal point of change, even when thought impossible. Neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to rewire and adapt, shows that failure is not a dead end but a chance to build new pathways for growth even in adulthood, according to psychologist Louise Hansen (Ryder, 2021).

  Just as neurons form stronger connections through repeated effort, our mindset and skills evolve when we embrace setbacks as learning experiences. This means that with practice and reflection, we can reframe failure, develop resilience, and continuously improve toward self-mastery.

Realizing Your Goals

Once you have successfully steered yourself onto new tracks of thinking and reimagined the way you view failure, it’s time to put your best foot forward. Let’s look at some of the most common platitudes given out when you are feeling low: ‘time heals everything’, ‘just stay positive’ and ‘success erases failure’. These sound well-meaning enough and do hold a grain of truth, but what is the missing ingredient here?

It is action, acknowledgement and reflection! Time alone does not heal; time + action + purpose does. Psychological research suggests that active reflection and meaning-making during difficult times lead to better long-term resilience (Baumeister & Vohs, 2003). Surface-level positivity can mask pain rather than process it, and coddle us rather than pepping us up to gather our resources, get in touch with our agency, and move forward. True resilience comes from acknowledging struggles and actively working through them.

  Achievements do not overwrite setbacks; they are built because of them. Growth happens in the in-between moments—the times when we choose to reflect, recalibrate, and rise again.

Let’s put it all together this way…

There is not knowing, and there is knowing, and the journey from one to the other is rarely smooth. In between, there is frustration because learning can be hard and because we often tie our sense of self to what we know or achieve. Whether it is expertise, exam results, job interviews, leadership, promotions, parenthood, or any other milestone, we imagine that success will bring a definitive version of ourselves—whole, accomplished, and fulfilled.

  But what if the struggle itself is the real path to self-mastery? Every setback and every moment of frustration is not just an obstacle but an opportunity to refine, reframe, and rebuild. Instead of getting stuck in the story of failure, we can learn to leverage these moments as upgrades, as lessons that expand our ability to grow.

  When we shift our focus from external validation to internal evolution, we stop seeing success as an endpoint and start engaging with learning as a continuous, fulfilling process. In doing so, we take control, transforming obstacles into stepping stones and making fulfillment an ongoing journey rather than a fixed destination. Failure then, is a pitstop, and setbacks can become breakthroughs if one listens to the wise mandrill (not baboon!) from 'The Lion King' movie: “Look beyond what you can see”.


If something in you knows failure isn’t the end of the story—listen to it.
The Fulfillment Practice is a 6-month email journey filled with reflections, simple practices, and stories to help you turn setbacks into stepping stones, delivered with care to your inbox. 
                                                                                        

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References

  • Maxwell, J. C. (2000). Failing forward: turning mistakes into stepping stones for success. Link
  • Taylor, K. (2023, July 11). Finding meaning through failure. Breathe Magazine Australia. Link
  • Patel, K. (2024, August 2). Why failure is crucial in finding your true purpose. Entrepreneur. Link
  • Macfarlane, M. (2018, April 25). It’s Not Failure. It’s a Way of Discovering What Doesn’t Work. ERE. Link
  • Making Meaning Out Of Failure | Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning Through Research. (2018, December 21). Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning Through Research. Link
  • Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39(3), 281-291.
  • Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140.
  • Sitkin, S. B. (1992). Learning through failure: The strategy of small losses. Research in Organizational Behavior, 14, 231-266.
  • Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
  • Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Self-regulation and the executive function of the self. In Handbook of Self and Identity, 1, 197–217.
  • Ryder, G. (2021, November 12). What is neuroplasticity? Psych Central. Link