Career failure leading to depression (21 helpful techniques)

In this article, we will provide tips and techniques on what to do when your career failure leads to depression.  

Depression is a serious disorder that could have multiple causes. One of the reasons could be career failure. When we feel like we have a career failure we feel sad, frustrated, and irritated with ourselves. We feel like there is a lack of energy within us to perform any activity and constantly feel fatigued and tired. We lose interest in activities that used to bring us pleasure and start to distance ourselves socially from our family and friends. We also feel low and it feels like nothing brings us happiness anymore. 

Career failure leading to depression

• It is okay to fail
• Take responsibility for your choices 
• Have a Plan B
• Develop resilience 
• Keep going and focus on the process
• Get a set routine 
• Have a strong social support system 
• Be curious 
• Learn from your failures 
• Be perceptive of your career failure 
• Don’t let career failure break you 
• Learn from other’s failure 
• Accept your setback 
• Success is not a straight line
• You’re not helpless or hopeless
• You can still change your career
• Do not compare yourself with others 
• You are not just your career 
• Try and set more realistic goals 
• Develop new skills 
• You can always restart

It is okay to fail

Failure is a part of life and it is impossible for any human to not fail in life. Rather than trying to avoid failure, focus on what can be done and how you can work to achieve your dreams. If you face any setbacks, learn from what mistakes you made that led you here and what things do you need to do differently to get out of it. Let failure be your teachers, not enemies.

Take responsibility for your choices 

Take responsibility for what went wrong and where things went wrong. You made the best choices that you could at that time based on the resources available to you. You did what felt right and it was a choice you made consciously. Take responsibility for it rather than blaming it on others. Once you have taken responsibility for it you will be able to move towards your recovery from career failure depression. 

Have a Plan B

If your first plan failed it is okay, come up with a plan B. It does not have to be perfect or exactly what you wanted to do. It just needs to be like a filler, something to help you get back on track when things feel like they are falling. When your original plan leads to career failure depression, let plan B help you provide time to get better and fight it. 

Develop resilience 

Failure helps develop resilience in a person. So aim higher and sometimes work towards things that are out of your reach. The disappointment of not achieving the goal that you knew was unachievable helps build resilience. It helps you learn from your mistakes and provides you with the confidence that you gave your best and tried your hardest, it was out of your reach only. It can help in coping with career failure depression. 

Keep going and focus on the process

Do not let the final destination be your focus, focus on what you are learning through the process of achieving it. If you feel like you grew and learned a lot in the due process, not achieving the goal will not feel like a big disappointment as you did get something from it. It helps give you a better perspective of your journey and helps combat career failure depression.

Get a set routine 

No matter a day’s success or failure, continue to work hard and keep going on. Have a set routine in place and work. Wake up at a proper time, work, eat and sleep at the same time. Set routine helps with career failure depression and provides you with a purpose to put yourself out there and work towards your goal. A fixed waking and sleeping time should be followed, even on the weekends. 

Have a strong social support system 

Reach out to your social support systems like your family and friends about your problems and the difficulties that you are facing. Do not keep your troubles to yourself as that increases chances of career failure depression. You need to let other people in and seek their help when required.

Be curious 

Never stop learning and always be curious. Being curious helps us be more open to suggestions and new avenues. As long as you are curious you will find a way to beat career failure depression. Keep your mind open to new possibilities and opportunities that come your way. Do not say no to trying anything new. 

Learn from your failures 

Failure does not mean that everything you did was wrong. It means that despite making some right choices you made a few bad ones too. So learn from the bad ones and see how you can improve upon them. Learn from your failures to help get out of career failure depression. Let your failures ensure that you do fail again. 

Be perceptive of your career failure 

At times it feels like everything is gonna end that nothing can repair the damage that has been done. But it is generally not true. There is always something that can be done, sometimes it is rebuilding or simply just changing a few things. Get a clearer perspective on your career failure depression to deal with and get out of it. 

Don’t let career failure break you

You are more than your career and a failure in that does not define you. It is part of you and career failure depression does not mean that you are a failure in life. You are a person with great strength and can fight depression. Do not let it break you. You can start again in your career pursuit or change your goals, as long as you understand that it is one setback and not a personality defining characteristic. 

Learn from other’s failure

You do not have to make a mistake to learn from it, learn from others mistakes and failures. To avoid career failure depression see what the other people who are successful and who failed did. Read autobiographies of successful people and you will see that they had to struggle a lot too and made numerous mistakes in life. It was the fact that they rose and learned from it that made them successful. 

Accept your setback

Yes you had a setback, yes you failed this one time, and yes you have career failure depression. But that does not mean that things have ended. Accept that you had a setback and that things are not going as well for you as you would have hoped. Once you accept that moving on becomes easier. So analyze where you went wrong and see what mistakes you made. 

Success is not a straight line

Success is not a straight line or a ladder where the only way is forward. Sometimes to be successful you need to fail and take some other route. Success is not easy but that does not mean it’s unachievable. You can be successful only if you have a few setbacks and are made resilient because of it. Despite the failure, you need to carry on and not let career failure depression consume you. 

You’re not helpless or hopeless

Yes, you failed but you are not helpless or hopeless in life. Your situation might look like you are but it’s not true. You might be facing career failure depression but you are not helpless. You have the courage within yourself to get up and face your problems. You are not helpless, just facing a difficulty. You are stronger than your weaknesses and downfalls.

You can still change your career

In case it is the unhappiness from working at your current job that is causing career failure depression in you, seek the help of career counselors to look for alternative career options. No matter your age you can always change your career. Look up what careers you can choose from and whether you want to change your company, job profile, or the job industry itself. Once you have figured that out see what can be done.

Do not compare yourself with others 

You are not in competition with others but just yourself. You need to strive to be better every day and improve yourself. You are not in a race with others so comparing yourself with others is no point. It will only worsen your career failure depression and that is not desirable. You need to compare yourself from your past day only. Have you grown over the years or not. It does not matter if people your age are in higher positions than you.

You are not just your career 

Your life comprises of your personal and social life too, not just your professional one. You are to spend only 8 hours a day at jib and the rest 16 hours on other things in life. You can not be consumed by your job so much that it becomes the only thing in your life. Make sure to develop a healthy work-life balance and adhere to it. 

Try and set more realistic goals 

Sometimes we set ourselves up for impossible goals in the hope of achieving them. Have a realistic expectation of how successful you will be. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses and then move ahead with your plan. There is nothing wrong with achieving higher and dream to achieve things that are almost impossible but have a realistic expectation of the result. SO that you do not have career failure depression.

Develop new skills 

In case you have career failure depression then identify where you went wrong and what led to your failure. Identify what skill set would have helped you and avoided you falling into depression. Develop new skills so that next time you are faced with a problem you are better prepared to face it. Build up your skill set, you never know which one will be helpful in the future. 

You can always restart

In case you are experiencing career failure depression, know that you can restart your life anytime you want. You do not like how your career is going, switch careers. If you do not like your boss, find a new job or switch locations. In case you are not wanting to continue with the way you tackle problems, learn from your mistakes and try alternative techniques.

In this article, we provided tips and techniques on what to do when your career failure leads to depression.  

References

https://www.bustle.com/articles/116391-5-things-to-remember-when-youre-feeling-like-a-failure

https://medium.com/personal-growth/you-went-all-in-and-failed-miserably-what-do-you-do-next-2a84c90e0ca1

https://www.themuse.com/advice/moving-forward-how-to-overcome-a-career-failure