Supplement Summary: Let’s talk about failure

-         This is one topic that isn’t always openly discussed

-         Even amongst your friends

-         You feel that it is a taboo

-         You feel that failing a unit or repeating a year is embarrassing and even humiliating ‘

-         Having mild-moderate anxiety (eu-stress) about failure is probably good – it increase your performance and gives you great motivation to do well in order to prevent failure

-         But the problem comes when you have extreme anxiety and your performance starts to drop because of this

-         Your eu-stress now becomes dis-stress

-         All you focus on when the exam comes closer is

• what your family would think about you if you fail,
• what your friends would think about you if you fail,
• that your friends will move on to become doctors and you won’t
• that the cohort you fall back on will look down on you

-         Then you have to ask yourself:

• What is the worst thing that could happen if I actually fail?
• Would you family still love you for who you are?
• If your friends don’t want to associate with you ever again because you’ve failed, are they the right group of friends to hang around with?

In the grand scheme of things, how significant is one year of set back?

• Back in high school when you failed a subject, it meant the world to you, and as time passes by, has those failures become more and more insignificant?
• When we graduate from university and get a job, who even looks back at our grades ever again? 
• When you are married, have two kids and you are a consultant, who knows or who cares about this one unit that you have failed?

Going through the process of fear neutralisation is important if you find that you suffer from extreme stress

Speaking and debriefing with peers you trust also matters