We All Inevitably Fail
Today I want to talk about a fear that scares us and holds us all back.
It's something that makes us scared of even trying for what we want.
It's something that hampers us from being our best selves because we get hung up on it.
It's something that makes us scared of looking in the mirror and acknowledging truths.
It's something that keeps us from embracing and working on our weaknesses.
What is this fact?
We ALL inevitably fail.
It's just a part of life ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You WILL make mistakes, come up short, try your best and fail, have setbacks, draw an unlucky hand, and make a mess of things sometimes.
Can we just embrace that?
Can we dispel the shame and ensuing self-identity crisis away from failure?
Because failure and shame tend to go hand in hand, but they really shouldn't. Because that's when we allow failure to become detrimental rather than catalytic towards self-improvement.
We all fail. That means we're trying. We're doing. We're living.
I don't think there's anything wrong with failing. I do, however, think we can go very wrong with how we handle failure.
Most people react to failure in one of three ways:
1. Feel shame. They become defeated and stop trying.
2. Feel shame. They play the victim and displace blame onto everything but themselves.
3. Feel guilt. They look at what went wrong, take responsibility for their share, make amends through action, learn, and move on to be better.
If you tend to do #1, well, stop it!
I'm being blunt only because you really shouldn't give up. Whether it's a missed promotion at work, letting down someone you love, losing a competition, or things in general not going the way you hoped, now is NOT the time to give up. Sometimes it takes several tries, and you'll never know what you could have accomplished or amended if you give up.
Persistence of effort tends to win.
If you tend to do #2, time to take a long, hard look at yourself.
The more you play the victim, the more you are taking away from your own ability to change the situation. It might feel relieving to shift the blame or fault off yourself for your mistakes, but that relief is temporary, my friends, because it doesn't change reality. If you are waiting for circumstances or other people to change, you are waiting for the wind to blow in your direction; you are leaving your fate in other peoples' hands. Seize your own power, and do the tough work of looking inward. You'll be rewarded.
You can choose to let failures empower you, or you can choose to play the victim.
#3 is where progress and growth happens.
There is nothing scarier yet more empowering than taking ownership over your actions, and seeking to learn about where things went wrong so that you can improve upon it for next time.
The difference between #2 and #3 is the difference between saying, "__________ happened to me" versus "________ happened. And here's what I'M going to do about it."
The more power you place in and give to external circumstances, the more you will be enslaved by them. If you believe that a set of circumstances are always beyond your control and that you don't have the power to create your path, you won't.
So fail. It's okay! It's inevitable, so why run so hard from it?