When We Fail
There are moments in life when it all goes spectacularly wrong. A relationship shattering, fired from a job, unexpected disappointments or setbacks. Eventually most of us are going to mess up, make a bad decision or face rejection. When it happens, we can feel out of control, embarrassed… it’s painful.
Failure is a normal and necessary part of life. It’s not about you ‘not being enough’, it may be you haven’t yet figured it out. Unearth the root cause since it may lie within you or it may be a belief handed down generation after generation.
Universal Experience
Failure is inevitable. It’s a collective experience. We have to expect losses, mistakes, and failures since each of us will face many in our lifetime. Some losses will be small and some big. These losses will influence how we think and what we believe.
Each of us has known wanting something, and when it doesn’t work out, we end up feeling defeated. Since childhood we’ve been conditioned to not ‘allow’ failure. This may have started in our family system, in school or sports, where we begin to fear failing and attempt to hide it away.
Natural Balance
Life is orchestrated for us to grow and evolve. If we want success, we need to allow ourselves to make mistakes. Being unable to deal with failure makes us vulnerable to stress, anxiety, depression, self-doubt. Most of the time we want to run away to avoid any painful, negative feelings.
Learning to lose will help you succeed as much as anything in life. Failing teaches us things about ourselves we may never have learned otherwise. What if we embrace the failure, to learn from it and keep moving? Are you ready?
Navigation Skills
Have you ever felt that you were not permitted to fail? Everyone messes up. How curious that different people see the same event in significantly different ways. Failure is also very subjective as well as a learned behaviour – so what one sees as a failure may be viewed quite differently by another.
As we learn about failing, we can develop some best practices on failing well and gracefully. To be able to see it through a different perspective transforming our loss into a major win.
Redefine
Identity: we are quick to blame ourselves. Uncouple the failure - you experienced a failure, BUT you are not a failure. These are two completely separate thoughts, yet many of us couple them together and this distorts how we view and feel about ourselves.
~ forgive yourself it will lessen the guilt and self-blame you are carrying.
Procrastination: we postpone starting something that takes us out of our comfort zone and is grounded in an irrational fear: of not being enough, of failure, of success, of the unknown…
We need to recognize that procrastination is a coping mechanism we use to avoid feeling uncomfortable, overwhelmed or powerless. We attempt to drive out the negative feelings by turning to social media, being busy, perfection – this is only a temporary fix.
~ only by facing your emotions can you begin to manage them.
Judgement: have a brilliant idea but fear paralyzes you? So, you do nothing. You stay stuck and that innovative dream never comes to life. The fear of a potential failure, being judged by others can bring up shame and embarrassment.
~ make a list: one side is fact and the other is feeling.
Discovery
When it all goes wrong, the world doesn’t end. Open to where you choose to go next because you never truly failed. You have been on a journey of learning uncovering who you are and why you’re here.
Consider that when you messed up this was part of a series of experiments that have guided you exactly to where you are today.
Realize that the true failure would be learning nothing from your experience. There are so many more paths to travel, adventures and learning ahead.
So, begin again.
