There are times ♪ when you try your best, but you don’t succeed. ♪ Like tripping on that step while walking a flight of stairs or dribbling coffee on a white shirt and hoping no one saw that. However, some people aren’t fortunate enough to power walk away from such embarrassing moments, as they somehow end up online for everyone to see.

Just like what happened to these folks from the An Attempt Was Made subreddit. The community is full of instances of people who, despite giving their best, still fail miserably. Scroll down to find some of their freshest posts, and don’t forget to upvote the ones that made you wince the most.

#1 An Attempt Was Made To Listen To A Sherlock Holmes Mystery

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#2 To Get Out Of A Zoom Class

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#3 To Connect With The Youth

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We often hear that we need to experience failure to learn from our mistakes, grow, and be better. Understandably, knowing the reason for our lack of success may prevent us from repeating the same errors in the future. 

But is that really true? It turns out that when it comes to human psychology, things aren’t as simple as they may seem. In a 2022 paper, researchers claim that most people are highly resistant to learning from their failures. And when they do, they tend to take away the wrong lessons.

#4 New Dino Discovered

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#5 To Create A Chat Bot

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#6 To Make A Yo Momma Joke

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The first reason for such human behavior is associated with emotions. Our species is mostly invested in feeling good about ourselves. Being a failure isn’t really compatible with this; that’s why we tend to walk away from it and protect our egos. 

The authors further explain, “Contemplating failure is hard because failure is a threatening experience. Indeed, when a failure threatens people’s sense of self-worth, they can react in ways that undermine not just their learning but also their mental and physical health in an effort to preserve their sense of self.”

#7 Lets Use Paper Straws And Wrap Them In Plastic

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#8 This Is How My Son Locked The Door When He Left

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#9 Boyfriend Tried To Wash A Down Pillow

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They continue saying, “Thus, although people may want to learn from failure, they often hold a competing goal that wins out: to feel good about themselves. The desire to see oneself as a good, competent person is a strong motivational force. When this goal triumphs, people disengage from failure.”

#10 A 2000-Year-Old Giant Cat Geoglyph Was Discovered 4 Months Ago Amid Peru’s Famous Nazca Lines, A Unesco World Heritage Site [1600×1176]

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#11 Outside My Hotel

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#12 ?‍♀️i Tried ?

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The second factor that influences our dissociation from failure is cognitive. We tend not to like hearing information that contradicts our beliefs and expectations. Our lack of success does exactly that—disagrees with our anticipation for triumph. Why take on a project you know you won’t shine at?

#13 To Inspire At The Gym

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#14 This “Disable Friendly” Ramp

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#15 Saw This On A Walk Today

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“No one aims for failure. People almost never expect to fail. This makes learning from failure cognitively difficult because people tend to overlook contradictory or unexpected information.” In addition, when we feel defeated, we might start losing capacity and control. Therefore, it further diminishes our commitment and reduces the odds of success in the future.

#16 To Hide A Parcel

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#17 My Nana Said Her Laptop Hasn’t Charged For Over A Month, And When I Looked To See The Problem, I Saw She Had Plugged An iPhone 4 Charger Into The SD Card Slot

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#18 Wrong Kind Of Pride

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What’s more, learning from a negative experience like a failure is a more demanding task than taking something away from success, which tires our cognitive system that has adapted to save energy. 

“For failure to be informative, people need to deduce what an incorrect response teaches about the correct response. Learning by elimination requires more mental effort. Because people are cognitive misers, they struggle to see the information in failure more than the information in success.”

#19 To Advertise Impressive Specs On The Box

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#20 To Draw Elon Musk

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#21 To Pass Inspection

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However, there’s a way to improve our chances of learning from our mistakes, despite the inborn emotional and cognitive barriers. The first strategy that the authors propose is to remove the ego from failure. This can be done by learning from other people’s mistakes that we’re not personally and emotionally involved in. Another option is to work up our ego so it can withstand the possibility of failure. Improving our competence, knowledge, and expertise is a great way to do it. That’s why experts are often better at learning from failure, as they’re less threatened by it.

#22 The “Grilled Cheese Reuben” I Spent $15 And And Over An Hour Waiting For

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#23 To Steal My License Plate??

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#24 To Get A Driver’s License

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To overcome the cognitive barriers, it may be useful to eliminate any tasks that may overload our brains. This means putting more time and practice into learning from failure instead of trying to juggle five other things at the same time.

#25 My Son Graduated 6th Grade Today. Between The Harsh Sun, The Mask, And Quarantine Hair The Pictures Turned Out Great

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#26 An Attempt Was Made To Take Off A Glove

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#27 To Take A Nice Christmas Picture With My Cat

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In general, learning from failure is important, but it doesn’t happen without effort. Training ourselves to overcome the emotional and cognitive hurdles helps us reflect on our lessons and improves the odds of success. 

#28 To Accurately Represent Anatomy

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#29 To Prevent Theft

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#30 To Do A Burnout

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#31 Eat Pant By Mart Timpson

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#32 To Advertise

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#33 To Communicate Why They Are Closed

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#34 To Call Someone By His Last Name

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#35 Step1: Buy A Man

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#36 To Build A Wall

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#37 Duct Taped Flag

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#38 To Not Tread On Snek

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#39 To Scam Someone Who Clearly Wasn’t In The Mood

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#40 To Relax A Bit More

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#41 To Summon Picasso

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#42 To Shoot Their Shot

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#43 To Motivate

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#44 To Recreate Homer

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#45 Finally Trying My Hand At Painting

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#46 To Make A Belle Cake

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#47 To Be Inclusive

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#48 To Build A Nest

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#49 To Spell The Word Peace

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#50 To Push For Equal Rights

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#51 To Advertise Your Attributes

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#52 My Daughter Bought This Phone Case. Much Of It Is In English

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#53 A For Effort, Kiddo

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#54 Jaw Welcome

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#55 An Attempt At Grammar By My Local News

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#56 Looks Like Harry Potter Will Be Joining The Poo Klux Klan

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#57 I Tried

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#58 To Shame Dog Owners

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#59 At Least They Tried

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#60 Tlirkey And Hlimmlis

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#61 An Attempt To Check The Box

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#62 To Verify Age

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#63 To Stop A Vegan

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#64 I Attempted To Make An Among Us Cake For My Kids 8th

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#65 There Was An Attempt To Rick Roll Everyone

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#66 To Avoid Starbucks

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#67 By Sears To Explain The Legend Of Zelda In 1987

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#68 To Sell Avengers Toys

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#69 To Get A Raise

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#70 To Build Something Well

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#71 He’s Not Helping

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#72 To Collect Rent On A House You Live In For Free

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