How to Deal With Failure: The President Who Lost Everything First

Before he became arguably the greatest president in American history, Abraham Lincoln lost his job, failed in business, had a nervous breakdown, lost his sweetheart to death, was defeated for state legislature, defeated for Congress nomination, defeated for Senate — twice — and defeated for Vice President nomination.

The full timeline, verified by historians and compiled by Snopes, spans nearly three decades of public and private setbacks. Some versions of the "Lincoln failures list" circulating online exaggerate the numbers — but the core truth is staggering enough without embellishment: Lincoln faced rejection, loss, and defeat on a scale that would break most people permanently (Abraham Lincoln — Wikipedia).

He won the presidency at 51. And then he held a fracturing nation together through its deadliest war and ended slavery — a legacy so vast it reshaped the meaning of America itself.

The question the Lincoln story forces you to ask isn't "how did he succeed?" It's: how did he survive the failures long enough to get there?

Failure Doesn't Feel Like a Lesson (Until Later)

Here's the lie that every motivational post tells about failure: "failure is the best teacher." It's true — eventually. But in the moment? Failure feels like proof. Proof that you're not good enough. That you chose wrong. That the universe is sending a signal to stop.

Psychologists call this attribution error — the tendency to attribute failure to fixed internal traits ("I'm not smart enough") rather than to changeable external factors ("I used the wrong strategy"). When you fail a test, your first instinct isn't "my study method needs adjusting." It's "I'm not built for this."

Lincoln's secret wasn't that he didn't feel this. His letters and documented statements show he felt it deeply — his breakdown in 1836 was real, his grief was real, his self-doubt was real. His advantage was that he kept moving while feeling it. He didn't wait for the failure to stop hurting before he tried again. He tried again while it still hurt.

The Three Failure Myths Keeping You Stuck

Myth 1: "Successful people fail less." They fail more. They just attempt more, which means more failures and more wins. A study of scientists by Northwestern researcher Dashun Wang found that those who ultimately had breakthrough successes had more failures in their early careers than those who never broke through. The difference? They learned faster from each failure and tried again sooner.

Myth 2: "If it's right, it shouldn't be this hard." This one kills more dreams than lack of talent ever will. The myth confuses ease with alignment. In reality, the things most worth doing are almost always the hardest — because if they were easy, everyone would do them and the opportunity would disappear. Difficulty is a filter, not a signal to stop.

Myth 3: "I need to fully recover before I try again." You don't. You need to process the lesson, adjust the approach, and move. Waiting until the sting completely fades is a form of avoidance dressed as wisdom. Lincoln ran for Senate, lost, and ran for president. He didn't take a decade to "heal." He took the lesson and moved.

How to Process Failure Without Being Destroyed by It

• Separate identity from outcome. "I failed" and "I am a failure" are two radically different sentences. The first is an event. The second is a verdict. Train yourself to say the first one and refuse the second. You are not your results. You are the person who keeps producing results — some of which will fail.
• Run a 48-hour post-mortem. Within 48 hours of a failure, write three things: what happened, what was in your control, and what you'd do differently. Not as punishment — as engineering. Pilots do this after every incident. Surgeons do this after every complication. It's not emotional — it's data collection for the next attempt.
• Study other people's failures, not just their successes. Read the Lincoln timeline. Read about J.K. Rowling's 12 publisher rejections. Read about Colonel Sanders' 1,009 "no"s in our starting over blog. Normalising failure in your mental model is the fastest way to defang it.
• Reframe "failure" as "data." Edison — with some historical embellishment — reportedly said he hadn't failed, he'd found 10,000 ways that don't work. The reframe isn't denial. It's a genuine shift from "this is a verdict on me" to "this is information about the method." The method can change. You don't have to.
• Set a "next action" before the emotion passes. The most dangerous moment after failure is the gap between the sting and the next attempt. If that gap has no plan in it, your brain fills it with reasons to quit. Before you even finish processing the failure, decide the next concrete action — one email, one revision, one application. Momentum survives failure; stasis doesn't.

The Timeline Nobody Celebrates

Nobody makes a movie about Lincoln's losses. Nobody quotes the 1843 nomination defeat or the 1858 Senate loss. We celebrate the 1860 presidency because it's the ending. But the ending only exists because of every defeat that came before it. Each one sharpened his strategy, hardened his resolve, and taught him something the winner's path would never have revealed.

Your failure isn't the end of the story. It's the part of the story nobody will remember once you've written the ending.

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