The Authentic 4-Step Process to Pull Yourself up After You Failed

A personal story about a fall and a climb

You never know where life takes you next.

Our paths lead from valleys to summits, from bottom to top, and often down again.

We may enjoy the view from the mountain of success as we follow the trail from one peak to another, but if we are not humble, one misstep can send us flying down the valley of failure.

It is always prepared to embrace us and teach us some manners.

While tasting the success requires plenty of effort and discipline, the fall often arrives in a painful split of a second.

One day you are on top of the world, the next morning you wake up in a gutter.

I enjoyed the view from the summit and patted myself in the back, but I also lay curled up in the cave of my failure and shame.

It takes a conscious and constant effort to stay on the righteous path. But what if you fall anyway?

How do you pull yourself up?

Here’s a four-step process of how I pulled myself from the lowest point of my life.

1. Acknowledge you are down

Sometimes it takes a momentary loss of focus to fall from grace. People are caught by surprise and wondering how could you screw up so much?

But sometimes it’s a long, painful decline. You let the problems rot under the carpet and the mistakes pile up. Then it all explodes right in your face.

My historic low arrived when everybody thought I’m on top. But life has a twisted sense of humor, doesn’t it? I just received my Master’s Degree in International Relations and a successful career awaited me.

But all my job applications and interviews resulted in rejection.

My lack of experience and credentials gave me a zero chance to succeed in such a saturated field as diplomacy and political science. Although I studied at the acclaimed university, had access to excellent seminars, internships, and travel opportunities, I used almost none of it.

I had prestigious opportunities but there was nothing prestigious about my attitude.

So I started to make up stories.

They all have an agenda against me. Don’t they see how talented, witty, and intelligent guy I am? Their fault, I’ll be fine.

But when I stripped myself of all the dopamine-inducing tools and substances and sat in silence with my thoughts, the naked reality of my situation screamed to my face.

I was down. I was haunted by the paralyzing feeling that I wasted years with my lackluster attitude.

If you want to pull yourself up, acknowledge you’re down.

2. Define what brought you down

This one hurts.

Our brains are so crafty they always have some believable excuse up the sleeve. We hear the inner voice whispering the ugly truth, but we swallow the bait set by our cowardly self.

When facing our own integrity, we are naive creatures.

I was trying to figure out how did I end up with a prestigious degree, yet unemployable. What did I do wrong?

The answer was as painful as it was obvious.

I spent my university years hanging out in our apartment, playing Xbox with mates, and smoking pot like Uncle Snoop. I managed to weed out any hint of ambition.

I did the bare minimum to crawl to my degree and spent too long in a resigned state of mind. I denied myself too many chances to grow and lived without ever leaving my comfort zone.

I was down because in a twisted way I enjoyed it there.

If you want to pull yourself up, be dead honest about why are you down.

3. Grab your chance, any chance

Before it improved, my situation went literally downhill.

After completing a remote interview with the Head of HR in a booming company, I almost acquired my dream job. The interviewer was thrilled by our call and was ready to hire me.

But a couple of days before the second round of interviews I had a severe accident and remained paralyzed in my bed for weeks.

A perfect job got away. Registration at the unemployment office followed and I started to lose hope.

After several months, when my mind traveled through some dark places, another opportunity appeared. My two good friends (brothers) ran an NGO and were preparing a big international event. They realized I’m in a bad spot, but both of them overcame their dark past and knew our lives are not defined by our momentary situation.

They were familiar with my abilities and offered me to put together a program. I seized this opportunity and never let go.

Although many problems occurred (as they always do), we managed to organize the international festival honoring the Czech — Canadian relationship. It was full of debates, movie screenings, concerts, and exhibitions; put together by me.

When we’re down we tend to see the whole world in darker shades. Any chance for a change is also a danger to fall even deeper.

But opportunities are everywhere. Myriad of them.

They can be massive, like my Days of Canada project, others are subtle and harder to spot. But there is always a bar we can grab to pull ourselves out of the failure.

A small project is better than none. A part-time job is better than no job. Moving is better than staying in a hole.

If you want to pull yourself up, keep your eyes open and grab the first chance you see.

4. Keep climbing

A couple of months after I started to work on our festival, I was hired by a consultant company as a project manager. From having nothing I suddenly had one part-time and one full-time job.

I even used my involvement in the international event to my advantage. My future boss was impressed by my willingness to work on a project I believed in regardless of financial reward.

After I seized the big opportunity, the rest of my life started to take shape. My mindset changed and I started to notice opportunities coming my way.

It’s been four years and despite some painful lows I managed to maintain my upward trajectory.

You can’t build a cathedral without a foundation stone.

Just lift yourself an inch off the ground and opportunities will start to flock together. They have been flying above you all the time, but your eyes were fixed on the ground.

Climbing your mountain of success forces you to lift your eyes and look up.

They say the sky is the limit, but actually, the sky is the target.

If you want to pull yourself up, continue to work hard and always keep climbing.

Final thoughts

We truly appreciate the ecstatic highs only when we live through painful lows.

Still, we should always aim to maintain an upward trajectory. But if life still drags you down, don’t lose hope. There is a path towards the light.

It requires mindfulness to realize you are down.

It requires humility to acknowledge what brought you there.

It requires vigilance to spot a chance when it comes.

And it requires dedication to keep climbing.

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