Ever felt a heaviness, fatigue, and anxiety about doing something that you know is good for you? It grows on you to a point of paralysis and inability and general unwillingness to do what needs to be done. To do healthy and sensible things for yourself. To say yes to your health and to your life. When we find ourselves stuck in this vicious cycle, it is beyond fatigue, anxiety, fear, or any other stand-alone emotion. This is often a general sense of defeat and dread from repetitive failures.

We all have innated and environmental factors that contribute to how we perceive and respond to failure. Resilience and Emotional Intelligence are rooted in an ability to repair ourselves after a failure and to be open to trying again. Without being able to bounce back from a failure, we risk our mental and physical health over time. We also set ourselves up for stagnation by failing to act when we need to, to change, to grow, and to build our emotional resiliency. This has grave effects on our ability to navigate challenges in life and build healthy connections with others. It can also lead to an increase in anxiety and loneliness that is detrimental to our health and wellness.

Occasional defeats are good for us, as they build strength and resilience when we have enough Emotional Intelligence to effectively cope with it. When we have never built this resilience or are stuck in a pattern of chronic and repetitive defeat in certain areas, we wire our brains to continue to fail. This is seen in different ways for individuals from failed relationships, to failed diets, to ongoing patterns of addiction. So, what contributes to this ongoing pattern of failure? Besides of course the humanity involved. A general feeling and mindset of defeat is what holds us back most of the time. This is assuming there is not a medical diagnosis that contributes to an inability to complete a task with or without accommodation.

On a personal note, I have felt defeated for quite some time regarding my health. Prior to giving birth to my twins four years ago, I had lost a significant amount of weight to have a healthy pregnancy. I ended up giving birth prematurely with severe pre-eclampsia that took months to fully resolve and had ongoing complications to my health and wellness. I developed a deep depression and fell back into old patterns, as no matter what I did, my body would not let go of weight gained from the pregnancy. My kidneys were slower than before, and I will be on blood pressure medication for the rest of my life. I was defeated and this sense of defeat grew unhealthily into my mindset to the point of struggling in numerous areas of self-care. Even I, who writes about and routinely practices self-care, was struggling. I isolated myself from friends, did not talk about my health much to others, and did not feel any point in making my physical self-care a priority any longer. To move forward through these hurdles, it required being willing to acknowledge my health as it was, and acceptance of myself exactly as I was in the present.

Through a journey of reflection, it became obvious that my history of resilience and pressing on in the storm was failing me because I had faced repetitive failure in this area. The fact is that we ALL have certain areas where we experience chronic defeat. We are not defined by defeat itself, rather how we respond to it, and how we care for ourselves after a failure. By giving up and falling into old patterns, we sabotage ourselves and trap ourselves in an ongoing cycle of repetitive failure that continues to damage us. By taking that struggle and channeling it against us through negative self-talk, and lack of self-care or willingness to try, we perpetuate that damage and rob our life of essential joy and satisfaction. We starve our sense of purpose and ability to self-manage, which can also lead to downward spirals of failure to self-regulate our emotions. When we are hurting for stronger Emotional Intelligence, it holds us back in all areas of life, adding to our frustration, stress, and difficulty connecting with others.

To build up Emotional Intelligence when addressing chronic and repetitive failure and a sense of general defeat, it is necessary to accept ourselves exactly as we are, where we are, and for who we are. This acceptance does not invalidate a need for change, and it does not let us off the hook of personal responsibility. If we are fighting ourselves, we will get nowhere. It is important to partner with ourselves as our best ally and treat ourselves as we would our most beloved person. Each of us deserves no less in this life, and we will be able to more objectively address the things that lead to failure and conceptualize a picture of where we can evolve to for a much more physically and mentally healthy way of being.

Once we can accept ourselves and objectively evaluate ourselves, we will be able to apply small changes to start meeting our overarching goals. By doing so, we counteract a sense of failure by allowing ourselves permission to obtain small successes that nurture our sense of ability to achieve our goals. This approach can slowly and steadily change our mindset from one of defeat to one of ability to visualize, set, and achieve goals in any areas of life we choose. This does not mean there will not be a crisis, a setback, or other issue that might derail us from our goals. By not allowing these small setbacks to equate to repetitive failures, but asking ourselves how we overcome them, the sky becomes the limit for overcoming obstacles, and we are able to return to ourselves as our capable and loved ally. We build an unfailing ability to try again and again because we accept, we both have a need to change and that we are worth all the effort.

©2022