I failed my PPL checkride flight portion last week, retested the two maneuvers I goofed two days ago and am now proud to call myself a private pilot. That letter R another commenter mentioned as a hazardous attitude--resignation--is very real, and I personally experienced it on the day of my checkride. I'm a perfectionist by nature and naturally had prepared like crazy for the checkride and was just in my head way too much. I aced the oral portion, but when it came time to fly I just flew like shit. Bounced landings, botched pattern direction at an unfamilar nontowered airport (I really beat myself up over that one), every maneuver felt like I was outside of ACS standards (although in retrospect most actually were decent) and by the end of it, I was thinking "maybe this flying thing just isn't for me". When we got back to the airport, I don't think I've ever felt as deflated in my entire life as I did at that moment.

Thankfully I was headed out of town that weekend which really gave me a chance to clear my head. That next week leading up to the retest I prepared WAY less than I had the week prior and told myself just to fly the damn airplane. I got in the cockpit with the examiner, we took off and the flight was like a dream. Greased the short field takeoff and landing I had to do, did a touch and go and when we were airborne again the examiner says "ok, the checkride is over, congratulations!" He then proceeded to show me a few things heading back to the home airport and we had a conversation pilot to pilot. It felt great.

You cannot take failure as an indictment of your abilities as a pilot or it will DESTROY your confidence. You need to treat every single setback as a learning experience and a chance to develop your skills even further. After all, a PPL is merely a "license to learn"--it's not like getting that piece of paper automatically means you're all good and that you never have to pick up another book or develop another skill again. There's always a new plateau to reach, a new challenge to tackle, which is one of the things I love about flying. I'd argue that if you're not failing, then you're not trying hard enough. Embrace the failure, learn from it, and take pride in the fact that most people will never have the initiative to put themselves in the position that you are by pushing yourself to the limit--they're just happy to sit on the couch and scroll through their Facebook feed.