Learning to Accept Hard Work

The tennis player collapsed with resignation on the chair, and started to glance around the empty, silent, locker room. His laboured breathing echoed, so far that it seemed to be heard from the tennis courts upstairs. His eyes showed sadness, a sense of utter disbelief at what had just happened. Suddenly, as if realising the SAT was the next day, he dropped his head into his hands, sobbing uncontrollably. Just when there was a hint of pause between his desperate gulps for air, the crying started again, faster and more furious. Like a train coming to a halt, in one swift motion, the crying ceased, and he stormed out the door.

Yes. This boy just lost the biggest tennis match of his life.

In life, we all deal with failures. When we do, we start to realise that we have two main options when dealing with failure. Firstly, we can blame lack of hard work and lack of time and energy put in striving for the result. The flip side of this would be feeling good that you tried, thinking the outcome was inevitable. Just as the tennis player sat in confusion in the locker room, we all seem to have a similar epiphany. As a community, we all deal with failure at some point, however, there is a fine line between whether we should be happy with our hard work, or feel that the result is due to lack of hard work.

Our community as a whole makes it clear that we have one main belief when it comes to the topic- that hard work should be the backbone of all of our successes, and when we fail, it is due to lack of hard work. One example of this comes from a school survey that was conducted. When given 2 scenarios of failure, both in sports and at school, 87% of the time international school students would not have been satisfied with how hard they tried, instead believing that lack of enough hard work was all to blame. In addition, when talking to Aryan Bhargava, a student at United World College who has dealt with failure, he commented, “Hard work takes you to where you need.” When asked if there should be a mix between these two concepts of hard work and being happy that you tried, he responded, saying, “I don’t think so. You really do have to work for it.” Underlying these words is the belief that hard work is the only option. The belief that success stems from only hard work in general. We seem to think that we are machines. That the amount of hard work is proportional to our successes.


On the other hand, the lack of feeling empathetic for ourselves does not take away from the need for it. Peter Bregman, an award winning author for the Harvard Business Review, used his daughter’s experience to show that we need to be empathetic for ourselves. After coming home from a swimming race in which she was disqualified from, Bregman talks about how Mimi sobbed for hours on end, unable to be comforted by her parents. Bregman later described how only the grandmother was able to comfort her by showing empathy, telling her that in the end failing may have been inevitable. At the end of the article, Bregman concluded by saying, “The learning, the avoidance of future failures - only comes when they feel okay with failing. And that feeling comes from empathy.”

This offers evidence that we are not machines. Our hard work is usually proportional to the amount of success, but not always. We feel that being empathetic means being pathetic. On the contrary, we need bits of love from other people and from ourselves that resemble our childhood. We all need support, and we should not be reluctant to feel happy for ourselves.


In addition, Marshall Rosenberg, an expert on the topic of empathy shared his thoughts, by saying, "Time and again, people transcend the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically." All in all, makes it even more clear that, as humans, we do need empathy, to show us that it is okay to fail. At the end of the day, it does not really matter whether we are receiving empathy from someone else, or we are letting ourselves feel it. It is all the same, because the main barrier is the one in our mind, barring ourselves from feeling good for what we have done. Once we overcome the fear of failing, we can then work hard to achieve our goals.

As a tennis player myself, I also know what it feels like to be afraid of failing. When we overcome this fear, we can achieve our goals. With this fear baring down on me like the current Singapore haze, I feel more and more nervous, and eventually do not end up achieving the goal.

So, next time you come across failure in your life, accept it with open arms. Remember that accepting failure is the first step in improving. When we go straight to our mistakes, we often feel very disappointed, alone and without support. On the other hand, if we feel content with what we have done, we learn that we have not failed so much after all. We know that we can improve, however we end up climbing a hill, not a mountain. This empathetic feeling closes the gap between you and the goal, where you want to be. So, when you lose that tennis match, ask yourself, “Was it really that bad? What did I do well? Although, I lost, how did I win?” This creates the positive mindset that is essential when it comes to learning from your mistakes. The common understanding we all need to grasp is that we should feel content with our hard work and at the same time know we will have room to improve. Only then, we can gain from our failures.

And if nothing else works? I am sure that you can buy a Magic 8 Ball that tells you what to do upon shaking.

Rosenberg, Marshall. "Benefits of Empathy Articles and Links." Benefits of Empathy Articles and Links. Center for Building a Culture of Empathy, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Bregman, Peter. "The Right Way to Respond to Failure." Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business School, 10 Mar. 2011. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Bhargava, Aryan. "What Do You Value in Terms of Hard Work?" Telephone interview. 15 Nov. 2015.