Instead of a Gratitude Journal, Try Making a Failure Log

What if resilience starts with writing down what hurts?

An inoperable German smoke ventilation box. 📷

You probably know about making a gratitude list—a list of things you’re thankful for, or that are going well. There’s a time and a place for such a list, but it’s also a bit of a cliché.

What if we flipped the script? What if, instead of (or alongside) writing down what you’re grateful for, you start tracking what didn’t go well? Things you messed up on, or times you got embarrassed, felt rejected, or just failed.

You’re not doing this to shame yourself—you’re doing it to shift the story. To take charge of the way it gets remembered.

When you make a “Failure Log,” you take experiences that your brain might want to bury, and you bring them into the light. In doing so, you’re practicing a kind of emotional exposure therapy. You’re teaching yourself: “This happened, and I survived.”

You can even take it further. For each failure, write:

• What happened

• How it made you feel

• What you wish you’d done differently (if anything)

• What you learned (if anything)

• And a final statement: “Even if this happens again… I will be okay.”

This approach mirrors techniques like EFT tapping, which work by going straight to the discomfort, acknowledging it fully, and then gently retraining your response. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) involves tapping on specific acupressure points while repeating phrases about your experience, combining elements of somatic awareness and cognitive reframing.¹

An Example: The Big Media Column I Never Wrote

Here’s a story of one of my failures. A couple years ago, I had a goal to write a regular column for a major media outlet. This wasn’t just a random goal—I did a lot of research for it, making sure to pick the right outlet and then going about the process of making it happen. Everything is figureoutable, right?

I spent three months trying to pitch it. I spent some relationship capital to get introductions to the right editors, then I dutifully crafted several ideas that I thought were timely. When I didn’t hear back right away, I gently followed-up with care and persistence. These things take time, I reminded myself.

Finally, I got the gig! Just kidding. I didn’t get the gig, and they never told me why. They just stopped responding to me, which is how it goes sometimes. Oh well.

That kind of rejection can sting, and I wasn’t happy about it. But I’m still here, working on other things. Maybe sometime the column will work out, or maybe it won’t, and maybe it doesn’t really matter.

In fact, maybe that’s the point: it just didn’t work out, and that’s okay.

This kind of exercise works for daily annoyances and bigger letdowns too.

The jobs you didn’t get. The relationships that ended. The opportunities that slipped away despite your best efforts—or the goal you abandoned halfway through.

Try it for yourself. Choose something that comes to mind that still feels raw or unresolved, and log it. A few examples:

Personal Failure Log

• Completely froze during a talk I’d been preparing for all month

• Forgot something important on a first date

• Lost my temper with a family member over something trivial

• Started a side business with big plans, then abandoned it when the first month was harder than expected

• Lost my temper with a customer service rep who was just doing their job

• Invested money in something I didn't research and lost most of it

• Showed up to the wrong location for an important meeting

And for whatever’s on your list, remind yourself:

“Even if I fail again next week, I’ll still be okay.”

(That’s the kind of phrase you’d repeat while doing EFT tapping—anchoring the discomfort while reinforcing your safety and resilience.)

You might notice that some of your failures led to something unexpected, or that what felt like a disaster at the time barely registers now. You might discover patterns in your thinking that you can rewrite. Perhaps you’ll just start to feel braver, knowing you’ve been through worse and come out the other side.

Or maybe you’ll feel like me and my column idea: a little frustrated and disappointed, but also still alive and kicking.

Gratitude is powerful, but so is resilience. Now get out there and fail at something! 😊

See also

The Inner Monologue That Won't Stop: Understanding Persistent Self-Criticism

You Are Not the Failure Point

1. Clond, M. (2016). Emotional Freedom Techniques for anxiety: A systematic review with meta-analysis. Explore: The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 204(5), 388-395.