EXPLAINED: You had one job funny fail pics | Rare Historical Photos

It’s no secret that failures at work are inevitable. We do not like to talk about them or remember them but they do happen. Sometimes we learn from these failures, other times we don’t and put an end to the career we either liked or didn’t.

But the mistakes we make at work, the ones that require us to step up, take accountability, and face consequences are often what keep people awake at night. So in order to find out about the psychology of professional failures, Bored Panda previously spoke with Hans Schumann, an executive career and life coach to London's Square Mile. Hans is also the author of the career coaching book "Falling in Love With Your Job – How to create more excitement and fulfillment in your career."

According to Schumann, most people become obsessed with avoiding failures at all costs. He explained that this can create a massive amount of stress and anxiety. “My take on this is that failure at work, in business or in life generally is unavoidable. The sooner we let go of the insane expectation that it is possible to sail through life without any failure or rejections, the better for our emotional wellbeing.”

 Although we cannot exactly change the mishaps that already happened, we can change our attitude towards them. If we accept that failure is part of life, we can embrace it as a learning experience, and that’s a crucial point in growing from whatever professional failure you had.

On the same note, if a person has been able to avoid failures at work, then Schumann would question whether they have been playing life too safe. “For example, if you win each and every sales pitch, it may well be that your prices are too low. If you can do your job with your eyes closed, maybe it’s time for a new challenge. When we play truly bold in life, our path will be full of both failures and successes.”

If you do end up failing at whatever task you’re given, the key is to find a productive way to go about it. For Hans, it’s about applying curiosity to get the most out of the learning experience. “Don’t judge yourself for failing. Beating yourselves up does not serve any purpose. Quite to the contrary, it may affect your ability to turn the perceived failure into a positive outcome.”

We should also remember that sometimes, the only way to find out whether something works is to try it out. “For example, you can only really establish whether you enjoy a particular career if you are in it. When you then find out, that it’s not a good fit for you after all, you have two main options: Do you resign to a life in misery by staying in the job? Or do you cut your losses and change career?," Schumann argued.

The executive coach would regard staying in the job as the real 'failure' and changing your career as mastering life challenges with resourcefulness.