How do I get past feeling terrible about a past failure?

This is a difficult situation to move on from, I understand. As they say, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Sometimes people don't want to be helped. Why? They don't like change. They like the way things are. They are the ones doing something wrong. Whatever the reason, you went through a bad time, regardless of the reasons. Given you have tried therapy, the only thing you can do is make the decision to move on. Recognize that all you are doing by allowing this to stay in your mind and impact your life is giving power to these people who don't deserve it.  You seem to see that. When you start focusing on what happened, try to do something else. Go for a walk. Play a video game. Do something useful. Every time you find yourself going in this direction, do anything useful or healthy you can think of to distract yourself. This is essentially behavior modification. Over time, perhaps it will help. Good luck.

I'm going to partly side with MÃ¥rten here that this is an opportunity to help others in similar situations. You've gained a new skill with all this experience. But your hatred is covering it up. As Kumar points out, time will whittle some of that hatred down on its own but you have to work on the rest of it to discover the skill, or skills, that will make you a better person and business owner. One thing that helps me, having been screwed over in the past, is to imagine the goals that person had. Focus on understanding why they did what they did. What act was ultimately best for them? What was ultimately bad for them. Was there a better way they could have screwed you? No matter how much hate you have for them, they probably thought they were doing something good for themselves rather than trying to hurt you. Understand what that was. What good counseling can do is help to begin to empathize with their decisions. You clearly don't want that advice but it's the right advice to give. Either get counseling that explores being more empathic with these people or learn to meditate. It's not about accepting them as "right" it's about understanding what they felt. Since none of us have any background beyond what you've provided I can't assume what their side would be. Maybe it was a managerial attitude from you? Maybe they weren't accustomed to the well paid job and reasonable hours and thought they could take even more? Maybe it was an "I'm here to help" bravado? I honestly don't know and don't want to assume. But I do know that you're never, ever, going to stop hating them and you're never going to truly learn from the experience until you learn to emotionally accept why they acted the way they did (rationally or not) and empathize with them. Clear that out of the way and you'll see some things you didn't know were there.

Welcome to the world of leadership - where providing for others brings about the nastiest behaviors in people. Change for the better is only appreciated in retrospect, it is violently opposed as it happens. Your best bet is to search. Search for people like you and surround yourself with them on your executive team. This is extremely hard. And time consuming. If you're in a small town you have a limited number of people to choose from - you may need to mentor apprentices. If you're in a big city, you have a lot of people to choose from, but the percentage of highly educated, hard working, ambitious people is the same. There's a lot more noise when searching. Don't give up your ambition, but don't become like them. Be cautious, savvy even, but not corrupt. Accept the ways of the world and surround yourself with the best people - pay them accordingly: as a leader you set the values for your culture and can reward & punish as you see nescessary to demonstrate those values. As for being advised on illegal behaviors - side for doing what is right & aligned with your values. Don't settle for rule following if those rules stand in your way. Use advice as a way to discover savvy in people, yet dig deeper to decide if that savvy comes at the expense of core values or if it is a realist operating principle to progress change for the better. The movie "Lincoln" is revealing, Finally accept your duty as a community leader, one that must bring change to a culture, even if that takes years (it will) and not hours as normal business is transacted. Spend your days communicating in a way that changes minds, attitudes, beliefs, and modus operandi. Shift from the mindset of sole productivity, to enablement by rhetorical force. It's a painful transition, and you may never receive credit (depending on how you handle your communications for legacy building), however, it is possible to shape, mold, and influence a culture. Do it, and retain some ownership.

The lectures & guided meditations found at http://tarabrach.com helped me immensely when I experienced a major tragedy with some aspects similar to yours.

My thoughts. Yes you CAN get past this.  Intensity of pain is a function of time and your ability to rationalize/learn from the failure.  As time goes by, the pain reduces bu  I would rather talk about how to learn from the failure. It is OK to feel the pain.  We, as humans, are hard wired to feel pain when we are rejected - and this is not very different from the physical pain of a wound.  The bigger the failure and esp. if we don't understand why, the more is the pain. Remember it is better to have tried and failed than not tried at all - if you are an entrepreneur or a leader (and what you showed here was leadership qualities), you will make mistakes; some big most small - but should you stop? Let's talk a bit about the difference between a manager and a leader.  The leader takes risks, goes out on a limb and carves a path.  If (s)he can motivate others, they follow.  But a lot of times people DON'T follow.  Our society is biased towards successes and  the failures drop off our radar.  But there are more failures than successes!!  The manager is told what to do and (s)he coordinates and manages.  My question to you. What would you rather be recognized for in this life: A leader/creator or a manager/keeper of status quo? Second.  So you failed!!!  Figure out why you failed and what should you have done differently.  The best way to do this is by stepping out of your head and dispassionately analysing the failures the person in front of you (that is you - the person who failed) made.  Get those lessons and imbibe them so that you make less mistakes than you did (You WILL make mistakes again in this life - simply because you are human).  Let's say you go and attempt to do something similar again, you would make less mistakes and hence have a greater chance of success. One thought for you while you do this analysis.  The fact that they rejected your help means that there was something missing - either you didn't communicate, or they didn't understand.  Or they were just the wrong crowd.  Can you figure that out?  I liken this to a startup.  If your customer doesn't want your product, you need to figure out why and either change your product or change the customer.  Keep experimenting till you find the right combo.  In your case, you didn't find that right combo. And finally in the end.  Who has got greater value.  You who failed and learned or those others who didn't take your help. All the best.  And my humble thoughts.  Just because you got kicked, don't stay down.  Our societies desperately lack leadership and a great leader is forged in the fires of pain and rejection.  So hang in there and keep going as far as you can - I know there may come a point where you WON'T want to take it anymore.  If no one else, I will root for you.  Remember Lincoln.  He failed and failed so many times: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/how_failure_breeds_success/2014/05/abraham_lincoln_failure_at_50_why_the_myth_is_so_persistent_and_powerful.html

The past is something that happened a long time ago! I agree that the past has some repercussions, something you feel guilty or bad about. But it is something which has already happened, the only thing it can mean now is what you do about it now. I think we all fall, we all make mistakes as human beings and we all get screwed and truth is - It is ok. But it is not ok if we keep letting that something which happened a long time ago to keep bothering us over and over again. Here is a post about getting over your past which might help you: Source: http://inspire99.com/how-do-i-stop-being-a-prisoner-of-the-past/ The past is a very interesting occurrence, some of which we are really proud of, some which we dread and curse that it happened which makes us keep feeling guilty over and over again. Now, we do know that it was a long time ago and we do know that it was a mistake which we are never going to repeat in our lives. But it still does haunt us, make us keep thinking what if, what if not and also question about the very fibre of who we are. How to avoid such a guilt trap, how to free yourself from the self created shackles of the past? Here are a few thoughts that might help.. Accept it - Identify what has happened, acknowledge it, appreciate it. I do understand that you wish it would not have happened, but the reality is different, it has, your saying that it is bad is not going to make it any good. Accept what has happened, it is very tempting to stay in denial but that is not going to offer you any solution! What do you make out of it? - A situation and an incident is just a situation and an incident. Your actions were based on your best emotions at that moment of time. In retrospect everything looks simple and easy. Appreciate the fact that you went through a situation and it happened. Try and see what you can make out of it, how bad it is and what good you can make out of it. Remember an event is just an event, its importance is what we assign to it. What do you want to remember it as? - Remember that every happening in our life is an event and we get to decide what we think about it and that is a  thought that is going to stay with us for as long as we remember. The past can be a beautiful thing or an absolute mess depending on the way you want to look at it. If you want to look at it as a miserable experience, it is going to be that. But if you want to focus on the beauty of it and the beautiful shapes it can take, you have a new understanding of the same situation. Forgive others - If you still bad, forgiving someone is one of the best things you can. It fills you up with an energy which says when you can forgive someone, someone can forgive you as well. It is a very possible idea that the world looks the way we look at it. If we are forgiving, so is the world, if we are going to let the details control us, so does the world. Forgive yourself - What has happened has happened. You have no control over what has happened now. But you sure have control about what you are going  to make out of it. You can sit here and keep feeling bad about yourself or you can step outside and move on from it. Be thankful - Be thankful that this happened. It could have been way worse – it could have been so bad that you never realize that it was bad. Having the knowledge of something bad is going to prevent you from repeating it. Give yourself some credit for noticing it and making yourself a promise that it is not going to repeat itself. What can you do now to make yourself feel better? - It can be anything, right from listening to music or sitting down for meditation. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it is ensuring that you are in control of your thoughts. The mind is an amazing servant but a terrible master. Let it know who is in control and let it know that you can make yourself better with just the snap of your fingers. It is you who has always got the final call! Live in the moment - How long are you going to wallow for something that happened sometime ago, something which you don’t even have control over, something you no longer are, something you have grown from? It is over, it has happened and that is the end of it. Start looking at the NOW you have and the FUTURE you can create. If you keep living in the past, the past will find a way to keep haunting you. You got to let it know who is in charge! Source : http://www.inspire99.com Copyrights : Pls feel free to copy, reproduce or use any of the content anywhere, I really don't mind as long as it is useful :)..

Our mind stores the data in the form of pattern and tags . We have patterns of everything in our mind . Let suppose talking about your daily life you wake up , wash your face , change cloths , go for exercise etc . So once you are done with one act your mind will tell you hey now you need to do this . You also recall things by seeing something . Let suppose you may eat a good bread and recall it tastes similar like your mother's made bread for you . So what you need to do is to change your routine .  Start destroying your patterns . Start doing something which you have never done before . Go for hiking if you havnt tried that . Go out and make new friends . In this way you will destroy your patterns and can able to over come that feelings

Keep in mind you can't change the past but you can change the future and the course your life takes from here. Also at 28 what are a few mistakes? Look at it positively you learnt from your them and who doesn't make mistakes in their 20s? I bet you are wiser and sharper than if you hadn't gon through it and you won't make the same mistakes again will you? At 25 you got through it lots of people don't at 45 or 55 so it's a learning experience, been there sen it, done it as they say. God I was screwing up in my 30s and made a big error at 41 so it sounds to me that you have learn't a great deal and maybe without those experiences you would not be the person you are now so look to the future and forget the past which you cannot change. I was given a piece of advice at 17 I never forget by an ex Battle of Britain Hurricane pilot who said "when you are my age you won't regret what you have done you will only regret what you didn't do" I am the age now he was then and it was the best advise I ever got because it's totally true.

Try these steps: 1. Meditate on your past and don't try to runaway from them. 2. Embrace your past failures and thank them for lessons. 3. Say to yourself that you're ready for new adventures. I'm sure you still love adventures. It's just your fear of failure is there for now, but it will pass. 4. Visualize your future, how you want to live, where you want to be, what you want to do, and how you want to be succesful at your business. 5. Meditate on your visualizations everyday until your consciousness is totally OK to feel great about the new you and the new future. 6. Let go of the past, and start working on your next steps. 7. Make small lists of what you can do next, and work on them. 8. As you start to love what you do again, all your disappointments will leave you. Good luck!