One of the most important skills we can develop is the ability to deal with disappointment and cope with failures big and small. On this episode of Being Well, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson discuss what it looks like to experience failure not as falling short, but as an opportunity for growth. They explore cultural narratives around "failure," individual variation in sensitivity, and how to manage the pain of failure, adapt expectations, and develop systems of feedback to allow for a greater sense of ease and purpose.

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Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

2:00: What do we mean by failure?

5:55: How loss works in the brain and what makes us sensitive to losing

8:30: Managing expectations of success

10:30: Attributional styles

13:10: How some can handle failure with greater ease than others

22:30: Deconstructing old narratives and failure as an opportunity for learning

28:30: Managing the pain of failure and setting up feedback systems

34:20: An example from Forrest’s experience

38:20: Poor decisions, lack of foresight, losing your nerve

40:30: Willingness to take risks

45:00: Defining our notion of success and failure via process vs. outcome

48:20: Recap

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