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Confronting our past failings on paper helps calm anxiety in the future. That is what researchers found when they studied people who wrote about past setbacks. They had lower levels of stress. Even better the team also found that this technique enhanced performance on a new task. They believe self-analyzing a past failure by writing it down can prepare a person for new challenges. Simply putting the past setback down on paper is acknowledging it happened. That alone helps the brain be open to managing that stress in order to move forward. It has been found to also lower the amount of stress hormones in our bodies. That alone helps us be better able to take on new tasks.